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“The trails of light which they [moths] seemed to leave behind them in all kinds of curlicues and streamers and spirals..., did not really exist, explained Alphonso, but were merely phantom tracks created by the sluggish reaction of the human eye ,appearing to see a certain afterglow in the place from which the insect itself, shining for only the fraction of a second in the lamplight, had already gone. It was such unreal phenomena, said Alphonso, the sudden incursion of unreality into the real world, certain effects of light in the landscape spread out before us, or in the eye of a beloved person, that kindled our deepest feelings, or at least what we took for them.”
― W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz

“There, on the greensward, they found the golden chessmen with which they had played in the old days of power and glory. Now they had no one to lead, no one to guard; they had nothing to do but play chess and think back.”
― Ingri d'Aulaire, D'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths

“The fact is that none of us can unilaterally decide what a word means. Meanings of words are shared between people - they are a kind of social contract we all agree to - otherwise communication would not be possible.”
― Peter Trudgill

“Owing to the turning of streets and to the way edifices seem to abruptly block passage while artfully concealing narrow channels that wind around them, so that the pedestrian changes course without really thinking about it...the zone, according to Debord, "inclined toward atheism, oblivion, and the disorientation of habitual reflexes.”
― Lucy Sante