Maneet

“Repository,” he finally says, “you know this word? A resting place. A text—a book—is a resting place for the memories of people who have lived before. A way for the memory to stay fixed after the soul has traveled on.” His eyes open very widely then, as though he peers into a great darkness. “But books, like people, die. They die in fires or floods or in the mouths of worms or at the whims of tyrants. If they are not safeguarded, they go out of the world. And when a book goes out of the world, the memory dies a second death.”
― Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land

“In the solitude, I felt the liberty you speak of. But I also felt your absence.”
― Céline Sciamma, Portrait of a Lady on Fire

“The Sniper Bird by Stewart Stafford

"Look out!" the crowd shouted to me,
"There's a Sniper Bird in those trees!"
A whooshing sound shot past my ears,
Making me duck down to my knees.

He must have gone rogue, I reckoned,
Someone cheated him over birdseed,
Then he took a squirrel as his hostage,
Get a negotiator quickly up those trees.

He threw up his wings and surrendered,
They brought him down in a gilded cage,
Never again sniping at innocent people,
He studies elocution with a parrot sage.

© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“The things that look fixed in the world, child—mountains, wealth, empires—their permanence is only an illusion. We believe they will last, but that is only because of the brevity of our own lives. From the perspective of God, cities like this come and go like anthills.”
― Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land