Clavain

“I no longer thought about the fire under us and the endless cold above us, nor about how thin this crust is which divides the fiery porridge from outer space. I only felt that the night was dark and full of life, of snails and moths, of growing plants, and I knew that there were trout and frogs in the brook. Sometimes the frogs here croak all night long, in a great chorus.
There are bats and owls, and deer roam the neighboring forests.
The flowers have closed. From the hospital there was not a sound. All was silence.
Then a great golden tone rose through the night, and it was followed by new tones. The nightingale had begun, and now filled the world with its abnormal voice.”
― Jens Bjørneboe, Kruttårnet

“The deep sea is a haunted house: a place in which things that ought not to exist move about in the darkness.”
― Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

“We gaze at the dark mass, where buildings, streets, trees, hordes of people, wide stretches of country with farms and herds of cattle are set solid like flies in amber; a hand has gripped a bottle of beer and one can no longer tell the difference between the hand and the bottle; one face has turned to another and the two faces are forever grafted together; two outstretched arms are ready to hold the child that is running towards them and the child is ready to run to the outstretched arms; a kitchen knife is stuck in the middle of the loaf, even though the person holding the knife had thought through to the end of the slice; water streams out of the taps and the cars are piled up in the streets and nothing of this can be changed; the world has spun full circle and the survivors must exist without it.”
― Sven Holm

“The immutable, awful quiet of a dying world.”
― William Hope Hodgson, The House on the Borderland