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T.M Cicinski Books

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“There was a name. That was all. A name upon a piece of paper. The beginnings of a letter, started but never finished and pushed into a drawer and then forgotten about as all old and unhappy things had been forgotten with the coming of that spring. Yet, after the name had been read, and a false seed of suspicion planted, the sun of their happiness dipped behind a bank of storm clouds and the light which had bathed them faded. It did not fade immediately. Nor in a way which was recognisable at the start. It faded in long silences and crossed arms, in questions which came from nowhere and were answered awkwardly for their strangeness. It faded in kisses avoided and tired sighs, then finally in absences and then all was passed into darkness, though neither knew it until a moment in which they both turned to look for what once they had loved, and found it was gone.”

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Book:The Mind Is Its Own Place
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“The lion,” she thought, “is very noble. There is no creature so noble. The elephant is noble too and the elands and the jaguar. But they are nothing compared to the lion. The crocodile is not noble at all. It is an old evil like the serpent in the Garden of Eden; cunning and full of malice, and even when it hunts, it does so in a way that shows no true courage. But the lion…” She sighed. “The lion is wonderful and all the beasts of the earth are not much beside it.”

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Book:From Whence The Rivers Run
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“If a person sins when they kills another person, why is it that they do not sin when they kill a beast?” Idalina looked across at her, frowned slightly and then shrugged. “They do.” “But people do not speak of it as sin,” the girl persisted. “No,” Idalina said. “That is because people do not see themselves in the beasts as they do in other people. If they did, they would say that it is the same.”

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Book:From Whence The Rivers Run
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“As all true gamblers know, the moods of luck, whether bad or good, are as changeable as the winds. One moment she might be with you, guiding you gently toward some distant paradise you never hoped to see; the next, she could be battering you to death against the rocks. A successful gambler therefore, the old man had said, is not one on whom luck never turns her back, but rather one who knows the moment to take their fate back from her into their own hands.”

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Book:Where The Waves Break Upon The Shore
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“Are human beings noble like the lion? Or are they like the crocodile? I suppose it depends on the person. Many are like the crocodile, but there are some who are like the lion. Once there were more. But as a species we have become like the crocodile in our greed. Now we do not take things because we need them, but just to take them, or for sport which is wrong.”

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Book:From Whence The Rivers Run
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“Nature is cruel and vicious and that that is why man was given dominion over the natural world, because man was the only creature that God could trust to bring justice to it.” Idalina frowned at this, but nonetheless she returned her arm to her granddaughter’s shoulders and gave them a reassuring squeeze. “Nature is certainly cruel,” she said, in a voice which sounded strangely cold and detached. “But make no mistake; man is crueller. And the gods: the gods are cruellest of all.”

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Book:From Whence The Rivers Run
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“I have lived in seventy-two cities over the course of my life," the old man said, proudly. "There is no part of the world, I know nothing about." The young people on the bench beside him looked at him with admiration. "And which city did you like best?" one asked him. The old man thought for a long time, then sighed. "Now I look back," he said, "I think I was happiest in the village in the country where I grew up. If it had been the second place I had lived, I think I should have stayed there my whole life. But because it was the first, I convinced myself that there must be somewhere better and have never stopped looking for it.”

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Book:The Mind Is Its Own Place
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“I have lived in seventy-two cities over the course of my life," the old man said, proudly. "There is no part of the world, I know nothing about." The young people on the bench beside him looked at him with admiration. "And which city did you like best?" one asked him. The old man thought for a long time, then sighed. "Now I look back," he said, "I think I was happiest in the village in the country where I grew up. If it had been the second place I had lived, I like I should have stayed there my whole life. But because it was the first, I convinced myself that there must be somewhere better and have never stopped looking for it.”

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Book:The Mind Is Its Own Place
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“That God, or gods existed, she had never doubted. If her husband’s death however had done anything it was to confirm to her the belief she had developed as a child, that the gods, though extant, were not worthy of worship; that by their inaction they had shown that they cared little for humanity. Probably, she had always supposed, they were too absorbed in their own lives to do anything but occasionally watch from afar as people suffered and struggled against the consequences of their inaction.”

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Book:From Whence The Rivers Run
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“I think that the waiter will melt if he stays outside any longer." "It is possible," I said, grateful to change the subject. "I have heard that that sort of thing happens all over Paris when the weather gets like this. The good restaurants give out Wellington boots so that their patrons won't ruin their shoes when they are wading through the pools of melting waiters.”

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Book:Drifting Onward Down The Stream
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“If the bible is correct and Noah saved one pair of each of the animals we have still on earth by taking them aboard his ark, I wonder what madness made him choose to save the mosquito. That was a great foolishness on his part. After all, what purpose do they serve? The birds eat them, I suppose, but there are other insects they might eat instead, that do not bite me before they are eaten.”

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Book:From Whence The Rivers Run
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