Sweet Jane

“And I sit here alone and far from you and it’s night and I’m reflecting on everything all around me and I am thinking of you. I saw it in your eyes, in your love, you too are swinging towards the depths of your own being in longer and longer circles. I saw happiness and pain in your eyes and reflections of the paradises lost and regained and lost again, that terrible loneliness and happiness, yes, and I reflect upon this and I think about you.
(from As I Was Moving Ahead I Occasionally Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty, 2000)”
― Jonas Mekas

“I love you because you are not mine, because you are from the other side, from there where you invite me to jump and I cannot make the jump, because in the deepest moment of possession you are not in me, I cannot reach you, I cannot get beyond your body...”
― Julio Cortázar, Hopscotch

“Ένας άνθρωπος που γράφει βιβλία, ξεχωρίζει απ' τον άλλο κόσμο. Αυτή ήταν η γνώμη αυτουνού, του Γιούγκερμαν, που δεν διάβαζε ποτέ του τίποτα.”
― Μ. Καραγάτσης

“ Before Jerusalem

Now they've come before Jerusalem.
Passions, avarice, and ambition,
as well as their chivalrous pride
have swiftly slipped from their souls.

Now they've come before Jerusalem.
In their ecstasy and their devoutness
they've forgotten their quarrels with the Greeks;
they've forgotten their hatred of the Turks.

Now they've come before Jerusalem.
And the Crusaders, so daring and invincible, so vehement in their every march and onslaught,
are fearful and nervous and are unable
to go further; they tremble like small children,
and like small children weep, all weep,
as they behold the walls of Jerusalem.”
― C.P. Cavafy, The Complete Poems