I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh, cruel, world. And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go.

― Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro 📚 💬

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Currently reading: Victory City by Salman Rushdie 📚

I close my eyes and see a flock of birds. The vision lasts a second, or perhaps less; I am not sure how many birds I saw. Was the number of birds definite or indefinite? The problem involves the existence of God. If God exists, the number is definite, because God knows how many birds I saw. If God does not exist, the number is indefinite, because no one can have counted. In this case I saw fewer than ten birds (let us say) and more than one, but did not see nine, eight, seven, six, four, three, or two birds. I saw a number between ten and one, which was not nine, eight, seven, six, five, etc. That integer — not-nine, not-eight, not-seven, not-six, not-five, etc. — is inconceivable. Ergo, God exists.

• excerpt from Jorge Luis Borges, “The Aleph and Other Stories” 📚 💬

Tell all the truth, but tell it slant.

Emily Dickinson 📚 💬

Bear Hill Pond a day after the polar vortex 📷

“I know an ash, it is called Yggdrasil A hairy tree, moistened by a brilliant cloud.

In the beginning was the tree. The stone ball rushed through emptiness. Under the crust was fire. Rocks boiled, gases seethed. Blebs burst through the crust. Dense salt water clung to the rolling ball. Slime slid on it and in the slime shapes shifted. Any point on a ball is the centre and the tree was at the centre. It held the world together, in the air, in the earth, in the light, in the dark, in the mind.”

Excerpt From Ragnarok by A.S. Byatt 📚 💬

Currently reading: Icelandic Folk Legends by Alda Sigmundsdóttir 📚

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? … When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”

• Job 38:4,7 📚 💬
• Also beautifully quoted in Terence Malick’s “The Tree of Life”

This is how we roll during a polar vortex 📷

Currently reading: Surrender by Ray Loriga 📚

Boston 📷

I would have liked to experience more of the heptapods’ worldview, to feel the way they feel. Then, perhaps I could immerse myself fully in the necessity of events, as they must, instead of merely wading in its surf for the rest of my life.

from “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang 📚 💬

Currently reading: Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne 📚

Light and shadow 📷

The source of our suffering has been our timidity. We have been afraid to think….Let us dare to read, think, speak, write.” - John Adams

from John Adams by David McCullough 📚 💬

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“The population of Iceland is 1,000 times smaller than that of the United States. We do not hide behind our apparent lack of superpower status. What we lack in manpower, we make up in volcanoes. But we are still figuring out how to aim them."

—Prime Minister Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson, speaking at a White House dinner for Nordic leaders in May 2016.

From How Iceland Changed the World by Egill Bjarnason 📚 💬

Wachusett Reservoir 📷

There are things that happen and leave no discernible trace, are not spoken or written of, though it would be very wrong to say that subsequent events go on indifferently, all the same, as though such things had never been.

Two people met, on a hot May Day, and never later mentioned their meeting. This is how it was.

• from A.S. Byatt, Possession 📚 💬