Zainab

“Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake
                                                                                and dress them in warm clothes again.
          How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running
until they forget that they are horses.
                    It’s not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,
          it’s more like a song on a policeman’s radio,
                              how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days
were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple
                                                                                                                        to slice into pieces.
Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it’s noon, that means
          we're inconsolable.
                                                            Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
                                                                                          Tell me we’ll never get used to it.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“The Russians opened his mouth and with a pair of pliers the Germans used for other purposes they seized his tongue and yanked. The pain made tears spring to his eyes and he said, or rather shouted, the word coño, cunt. With the pliers in his mouth the exclamation was transformed, coming out as the word kunst. The Russian who spoke German stared at him in surprise. The Sevillan shouted Kunst, Kunst, and wept in pain. The word Kunst, in German, means art, and that was how the bilingual soldier heard it and he said that the son of a bitch was an artist or something. The soldiers who were torturing the Sevillan removed the pliers along with a little piece of tongue and waited, momentarily hypnotized by the discovery. Art. The thing that soothes wild beasts.”
― Roberto Bolaño, Woes of the True Policeman

“The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See