Michael’s Reviews > Collected Fictions > Status Update

“In the wide realm of the world there are ancient forms, incorruptible and eternal forms—any one of them might be the symbol I sought. A mountain might be the word of the god, or a river or the empire or the arrangement of the stars. And yet, in the course of the centuries mountains are leveled and the path of a river is diverted, and empires know mutability and ruin, and the design of the stars is altered.”

“There was the cat, asleep. He ordered a cup of coffee, slowly spooned sugar into it, tasted it (a pleasure [ ] forbidden him in the clinic) and thought, while he stroked the cat’s black fur, that this contact was illusory, that he and the cat were separated as though by a pane of glass, because man lives in time, in successiveness, while the magical animal lives in the present, in the eternity of the instant.”

“At that same period there was hope that the fundamental mysteries of mankind—the origin of the Library and of time—might be revealed. In all likelihood those profound mysteries can indeed be explained in words; if the language of the philosophers is not sufficient, then the multiform Library must have produced the extraordinary language that is required, together with the words and grammar of that language.”