Rachel B

“We remained travelers, enclosed in the self, capable, possibly, of transforming ourselves in contact with alterity, but certainly not of experiencing it profoundly. We are spies, we make the rapid, furtive contact of spies. When”
― Mathias Énard, Compass

“Part of jazz is the illusion of spontaneity and Monk played the piano as though he’d never seen one before.”
― Geoff Dyer, But Beautiful: A Book about Jazz

“There are two categories of friendship: those in which people enliven one another and those in which people must be enlivened to be with one another. In the first category one clears the decks to be together; in the second one looks for an empty space in the schedule.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City

“It was like a flash of lightning amidst the dark of night, when for some reason you suddenly see an extraordinary multitude of things at once: the bed canopy, the folding screen, the window, the canary fluttering on its perch, and a glass with a silver spoon in it and spots of magnesium on its handle. It is probably the quality of fear to have big eyes.”
― Nikolai Leskov, The Enchanted Wanderer: and Other Stories