Gerard Reve: The Evenings: A Winter's Tale

All is lost, everything is ruined. It’s ten past three.


“I take cards out of a file. Once I have taken them out, I put them back in again."


“Age, gender and nature of bodily harm: please, do tell.”


"Eternal, only, almighty, our God, fix Your gaze upon my parents. See them in their need. Do not turn Your eyes from them."

Karl Ove Knausgaard: Autumn

The world is material. We are always in a certain place. Now I am here.


What makes life worth living? No child asks itself that question. To children life is self-evident. Life goes without saying: whether it is good or bad makes no difference. This is because children don’t see the world, don’t observe the world, don’t contemplate the world, but are so deeply immersed in the world that they don’t distinguish between it and their own selves. Not until that happens, until a distance appears between what they are and what the world is, does the question arise: what makes life worth living?

Javier Cercas: The Speed of Light

"No one comes back from Vietnam: that, once you’ve been there, return is impossible."


"Don’t have any, because you’ll regret it; although if you don’t have any, you’ll regret that too."


"All love stories are absurd because love is an illness that only time can cure; but having a child is risking a love so absurd that only death can end it.”


[a café]…converted into one of those interchangeable cafes that American snobs consider European (from Rome) and European snobs consider American (from New York), but which are impossible to find in either New York or Rome.