Jim Smith

“What is called realism is usually a record of life at a low pitch and ebb viewed in the sunless light of day.”
― Walter de la Mare

“The depressive experiences himself as walled off from the lifeworld, so that his own frozen inner life – or inner death – overwhelms everything; at the same time, he experiences himself as evacuated, totally denuded, a shell: there is nothing except the inside, but the inside is empty. For the depressive, the habits of the former lifeworld now seem to be, precisely, a mode of playacting, a series of pantomime gestures (‘a circus complete with all fools’), which they are both no longer capable of performing and which they no longer wish to perform – there’s no point, everything is a sham.”
― Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures

“There is a power in the emptiness of the hills; and it's a hostile power. One old tin-can lying on the ground would make all the difference. But there was no tin-can: what we could see was all so powerfully un-human as to be able to erase our knowledge of its narrow limits.”
― Sarban, Ringstones and Other Curious Tales

“The measurements of space and time, the photographs of far stars and of points of light which proved to be composed of thousands of stars, filled him with an awe which felt like the edge of a delicious panic.”
― Ramsey Campbell, Midnight Sun