“And I suddenly sensed the nature of the terrain on which I walked: it was hardly solid ground... and perhaps what I walked on couldn't even be called earth, this matter that buckled beneath my steps and sometimes seemed to sigh from its depths with a hollow reverberation. Hadn't the term 'earth' arisen solely on the basis of an embarrassed convention, wasn't it a noun that passed in silence over matter's true nature...? Wasn't the use of substantive nouns nearly always a silence about the true substances of things—and wasn't that silence so essential to us that it became the basic material of our thinking? What were we really passing over: over silenced things, over vanished things, over the basic substance of ourselves, over the silence in our thoughts? Passing silently over our silence?” SilenceNo Idea Wtf He Is Saying Here Book:Old Rendering Plant Source: Old Rendering Plant
“From sheer nervousness, or to linger for a moment, I'd urinate at the wayside; scanning the darkness before me, a cherry stump behind me, I'd piss a meticulous semicircle in the ashes at my feet. Crossing this line and looking back as I walked onward, I'd think I saw foggy vapors rise from the place I'd circled with my water, and those vapors took on almost human form, those figures' spectral silhouettes beckoned, and words came, barely audible: Don't forget us! -- They couldn't follow me; their souls were bound; I'd nailed them to the imaginary cross of a nonexistent cherry tree.” RegretGhosts Of The Past Book:The Tidings of the Trees Source: The Tidings of the Trees
“What people that town produces! Nothing but dead, useless things come out of the town and can pass across the borders. Perhaps we used to be something like that ... there's no one here but people who never learned to make their fortune in town. Out here, it has the advantage that it can't be confused with fortune. Here no one needs to deceive himself. Here no one needs to forget.” Small TownsProvincialismBig City Book:The Tidings of the Trees Source: The Tidings of the Trees
“What people that town produces! Nothing but dead, useless things come out of the town and can pass across the borders. Perhaps we used to be something like that ... there's no one here but people who never learned to make their fortune in town. And people who prefer misfortune out here to misfortune in town. Out here, it has the advantage that it can't be confused with fortune. Here no one needs to deceive himself. Here no one needs to forget.” Big CitiesSmall TownsProvincialism Book:The Tidings of the Trees Source: The Tidings of the Trees
“Oh, how I've envied the lives of those who could spend life sitting down. A place to sit, a place to sit! I'd lament, circling my empty chair.” WritingOverthinkingWriters Block Book:The Tidings of the Trees Source: The Tidings of the Trees