Newt

“I exist.’ In thousands of agonies — I exist. I’m tormented on the rack — but I exist! Though I sit alone in a pillar — I exist! I see the sun, and if I don’t see the sun, I know it’s there. And there’s a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Some love is so powerful after all, that it must always include sadness, because encrypted within it is the knowledge that someday it will come to an end.”
― M.T. Anderson, Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad

“Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time. Art does not exist for art's sake: it exists for people's sake.”
― Julian Barnes, The Noise of Time

“The furies are at home
in the mirror; it is their address.
Even the clearest water,
if deep enough can drown.
Never think to surprise them.
Your face approaching ever
so friendly is the white flag
they ignore. There is no truce

with the furies. A mirror’s temperature
is always at zero. It is ice
in the veins. Its camera
is an X—ray. It is a chalice

held out to you in
silent communion, where gaspingly
you partake of a shifting
identity never your own.”
― R. S. Thomas