Cayla Bradley

“I don’t know: perhaps it’s a dream, all a dream. (That would surprise me.) I’ll wake, in the silence, and never sleep again. (It will be I?) Or dream (dream again), dream of a silence, a dream silence, full of murmurs (I don’t know, that’s all words), never wake (all words, there’s nothing else).

You must go on, that’s all I know.

They’re going to stop, I know that well: I can feel it. They’re going to abandon me. It will be the silence, for a moment (a good few moments). Or it will be mine? The lasting one, that didn’t last, that still lasts? It will be I?

You must go on.

I can’t go on.

You must go on.

I’ll go on. You must say words, as long as there are any - until they find me, until they say me. (Strange pain, strange sin!) You must go on. Perhaps it’s done already. Perhaps they have said me already. Perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story. (That would surprise me, if it opens.)

It will be I? It will be the silence, where I am? I don’t know, I’ll never know: in the silence you don’t know.

You must go on.

I can’t go on.

I’ll go on.”
― Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable

“They had spoken once, but there is not need for speech if it is only a habit anyay. Kino sighed with satisfaction -- and that was conversation.”
― John Steinbeck, The Pearl

“Calm —indeed the calmest— reflection might be better than the most confused decisions”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

“Life is terrible. It rules us, we do not rule it.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan