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[...] that a perfect likeness would rather suggest a specular, and hence speculatory, phenomenon; and that two chess games with identical openings and identical end moves might ramify in an infinite number of variations, on one board and in two brains, at any middle stage of their irrevocably converging development.

Finished Molloy

Taking a stone from the right pocket of my greatcoat, and putting it in my mouth, I replaced it in the right pocket of my greatcoat by a stone from the right pocket of my trousers, which I replaced by a stone from the left pocket of my greatcoat, which I replaced by a stone from the left pocket of my trousers, which I replaced by a stone which was in my mouth, as soon as I had finished sucking it.

That is one of the many reasons why I avoid speaking as much as possible. For I always say either too much or too little, which is a terrible thing for a man with a passion for truth like mine.

DIFFERENCE

Tell me what's the difference
between hope and waiting
because my heart doesn't know
It constantly cuts itself on the glass of waiting
It constantly gets lost in the fog of hope

On the threshold of the poem shake off the dust
the powder of hate from your soul
set aside passion
so as not to defile words

Into this space step alone
and the tenderness of things will enfold you
and lead you toward the dark
as if you had lost worldly sight

There whatever was named will return
and stand in the radiance so you and I
can find each other
like two trees that were lost in fog

What's it like to be human
asked the bird

I don't know really
It's to be prisoner in your own skin
but crave infinity
to be captive of a crumb of time
but reach for eternity
to be hopelessly uncertain
and a fool of hope
to be a crystal of frost
and a handful of heat
to breathe in air
to choke without words
to be on fire
and have a nest of ashes
to eat bread
but feast on hungers
to die without love
but love beyond..

Thinking about time in this way makes me dizzy, and reminds me of one of my favourite literary quotations, by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges: 'Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.'

Most of us are blessed with around 30,000 days, which should be enough to live well. But somehow those days go by, filled with meals, moments and meetings, and we rarely capture what exactly we did with them, or why. We judge the quality of our lives by our personal relationships, our social contribution or our achievements, but as the poet Annie Dillard reminds us, 'How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.'

I write in order to comprehend not to express myself
I don't grasp anything I'm not ashamed to admit it
sharing this not knowing with a maple leaf
So I turn with questions to words wiser than myself
to things that will endure long after us

For about half of my childhood chess was central to my idea of who I was, and what the world was about. I loved the game with all the pain, need and longing that is wrapped up in love. I have loved chess as a child loves a guardian who keeps them safe, as a teenage boy loves a girl who represents love itself, as a young adult loves his newfound autonomy and his place in the community, as a student loves his teacher,

Perhaps most worrying of all, one of the studies found the causal effect of parents' failure mindsets on their responses to their children's hypothetical failure: 'Overall, parents who see failure as debilitating focus on their children's performance and ability rather than on their children's learning, and their children, in turn, tend to believe that their intelligence is fixed rather than malleable.'

The time of harvest and the time of poems is passing.
Sorrel, fern and wild strawberries covered my notebook.
Pine cones and dry seeds of trees
mixed with shreds of sentences.

Not a single poem has yet matured.
The crossed-out words return with clamor.
Light glitters in patches on mowed fields.
This hour too will be more lovely in recollection.

One study found that parents' praise of children's effort at 14–38 months of age (e.g. 'Good job putting that block back in!') rather than natural ability ('You're a smart girl!') predicted growth mindsets at 7–8 years, suggesting that causal mechanisms identified in many experimental studies focused on school-related achievement may be operating on home environments too.

What the philosophers say about reality is often as deceptive as when you see a sign in a second-hand store that reads: Pressing Done Here. If you went in with your clothes to have them pressed you would be fooled; the sign is for sale.

The real pleasure consists not in what one takes pleasure in but in the mind. If I had in my service a humble spirit who, when I asked for a glass of water, brought me all the world's most expensive wines nicely blended in a goblet, I would dismiss him until he learned that the pleasure consists not in what I enjoy but in having my way.

What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music. His fate is like that of those unfortunates who were slowly tortured by a gentle fire in Phalaris's bull; their cries could not reach the tyrant's ears to cause him dismay, to him they sounded like sweet music.

The eruption of Mount Toba in Sumatra 74000 years ago—when Sumatra was joined to mainland Asia—was the greatest recorded explosion in history and its cloud of ash must have darkened parts of the globe. It led to such a destruction of plants that it dramatically reduced the population of the whole world. Such a volcano could have driven survivors in the direction of Australia.

He quoted Latin, he was so exasperated. He would have quoted Chinese or Greenlandese, if he had known those two languages; for he was undergoing one of those crises by which the whole mind gives up hints of what it conceals, like the ocean, which, in a storm, parts from the sea-wrack of its shore to the sand of its unfathomable depths.

'in fact, what better occupation than to lie by the fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind beats on the panes, the lamp burns...?'
[...]
'Has it sometimes happened to you,' Léon went on, 'that you meet in a book with a vague idea you've had, some dim picture that returns from a long way off, and which is like the total exposure of your shrewdest perception?'

On the contrary, ought not a man to know everything, excel in numerous activities, initiate you in the forces of passion, in the refinements of life, in all the mysteries? But this one taught nothing, knew nothing, desired nothing. He believed her happy; and she resented him for this stolid calm, this serene dullness, for the very happiness that she gave him.

If Charles had wanted it, however, if he had suspected something, if his gaze, just once, had come to meet her thoughts, it seemed to her that a sudden plenteousness would have detached itself from her heart, as the fruit of an espalier falls when a hand is laid upon it. But, as the intimacy of their life pressed them closer to each other, an indifference grew inside that loosened her from him.

Used to flat views, she was drawn, contrariwise, to the uneven. She liked the sea only for its storms, and greenery only when it was thinly scattered among ruins. She had to be able to derive a kind of personal advantage from things; and she rejected as useless all that did not immediately contribute to her heart's consummation,being of a temperament more sentimental than artistic,seeking emotions and not landscapes.

Charles, from time to time, opened his eyes; then, his mind wearying and sleep returning of its own accord, he soon slipped into a kind of slumber where, his recent feelings merging with his memories, he perceived himself in duplicate, both student and married man, lying in his bed as he had been just now, crossing an operating room as in the past. The hot smell of the poultices blended in his head with the fresh...

[...] They'd be amazed to hear
that Chance has been toying with them
now for years.

Not quite ready yet
to become their Destiny,
it pushed them close, drove them apart,
it barred their path,
stifling a laugh,
and then leaped aside.
[...]
Every beginning
is only a sequel, after all,
and the book of events
is always open halfway through.

—from Love at First Sight

"How should we live?" someone asked me in a letter.
I had meant to ask him
the same question.

Again, and as ever,
as may be seen above,
the most pressing questions
are naive ones.

—from The Century's Decline

The Onion

The onion, now that's something else
Its innards don't exist.
Nothing but pure onionhood
fills this devout onionist.
Oniony on the inside,
onionesque it appears.
It follows its own daimonion
without our human tears.

Our skin is just a coverup
for the land where none dare go,
an internal inferno,
the anathema of anatomy.
In an onion there's only onion
from its top to its toe,
onionymous monomania,

I believe in the refusal to take part.
I believe in the ruined career.
I believe in the wasted years of work.
I believe in the secret taken to the grave.

These words soar for me beyond all rules
without seeking support from actual examples.
My faith is strong, blind, and without foundation.

—from Discovery

Going Home

He came home. Said nothing.
It was clear, though, that something had gone wrong.
He lay down fully dressed.
Pulled the blanket over his head.
Tucked up his knees.
He's nearly forty, but not at the moment.
He exists just as he did inside his mother's womb,
clad in seven walls of skin, in sheltered darkness.
Tomorrow he'll give a lecture
on homeostasis in megagalactic cosmonautics.
For now, though, he has

Those who put the historical novel in a category apart are forgetting that what every novelist does is only to interpret, by means of the techniques which his period affords, a certain number of past events; his memories, whether consciously or unconsciously recalled, whether personal or impersonal, are all woven of the same stuff as History itself.