Jacek

“I sat silent before the book, and the book unsealed its lips and revealed to me things I had never heard before. When I was tired of studying I thought many thoughts, and this is one of them: Many generations ago a wise man wrote a book and he did not know of this man who sits here, but in the end all his words prove to be meant for him.”
― S.Y. Agnon, A Guest for the Night

“The poet Gary Snyder’s finely unpoetic image of composting is useful here. Stuff goes into the writer, a whole lot of stuff, not notes in a notebook but everything seen and heard and felt all day every day, a lot of garbage, leftovers, dead leaves, eyes of potatoes, artichoke stems, forests, streets, rooms in slums, mountain ranges, voices, screams, dreams, whispers, smells, blows, eyes, gaits, gestures, the touch of a hand, a whistle in the night, the slant of light on the wall of a child’s room, a fin in a waste of waters. All this stuff goes down into the novelist’s personal compost bin, where it combines, recombines, changes; gets dark, mulchy, fertile, turns into ground. A seed falls into it, the ground nourishes the seed with the richness that went into it, and something grows. But what grows isn’t an artichoke stem and a potato eye and a gesture. It’s a new thing, a new whole. It’s made up.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination

“The moonlight returned and brightened. The Dead Sea shone like a barrel of oil, sparks of light shot out from it illuminating the mountainsides, and from the mountains one could see bonfires. Since I was sad, I thought of things that make one even sadder.”
― S.Y. Agnon, The Outcast & Other Tales

“In general, when distinguishing between yourself and others, don't be so foolish as to think you are the only one who is real or who counts, and that the other person is just an illusion. Life is common to both of you, and it is only chance that you are not he. For that reason, do not love yourself alone, but love him likewise, and treat him as you would wish him to treat you if he were you! Be cordial with one another and kiss your fingertips when you walk by one another and bow courteously and speak the greeting, "Be well and healthy!" For it is just as important that he is healthy as that you are. And even if it is only outward courtesy to do this and kiss your fingertips, nevertheless the gesture will instill in your heart something of what you should feel toward your neighbor. — Say Amen to all that!
And they said Amen.”
― Thomas Mann, The Tables of the Law