Chris Burkhalter

“Never saw so many peaceful wrecks in my life.... That's what I want to be when I grow up, just a peaceful wreck holding hands with other peaceful wrecks.”
― Tillie Olsen, Tell Me a Riddle

“If we do not alter with the times, the times yet alter us. We may stand perfectly still, but our surroundings shift round and we are not in the same relationship to them for long; just as a chameleon, matching perfectly the greenness of a leaf, should know that the leaf will one day fade.”
― Elizabeth Taylor, A Game of Hide and Seek

“I have before now experienced that the best way to get a vivid impression and feeling of a landscape is to sit down before it and read, or become otherwise absorbed in thought; for then, when our eyes happen to be attracted to the landscape, you seem to catch Nature at unawares, and see her before she has time to change her aspect. The effect lasts but for a single instant, and passes away almost as soon as you are conscious of it; but it is real for that moment. It is as if you could overhear and understand what the trees are whispering to one another; as if you caught a glimpse of a face unveiled, which veils itself from every willful glance. The mystery is revealed, and, after a breath or two, becomes just as much a mystery as before.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne

“Mold started to grow in my ears because no one ever spoke to me”
― Yōko Tawada, Memoirs of a Polar Bear