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Quote by Mathias Énard

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Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants

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Mathias Énard

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“After all the jacks are in their boxes And the clowns have all gone to bed You can hear happiness staggering on down the street Footprints dressed in red And the wind whispers, "Mary" A broom is drearily sweeping Up the broken pieces of yesterday's life Somewhere, a queen is weeping Somewhere, a king has no wife And the wind, it cries, "Mary" The traffic lights, they turn blue tomorrow And shine their emptiness down on my bed The tiny island sags downstream 'Cause the life that lived is dead And the wind screams, "Mary" Will the wind ever remember The names it has blown in the past? And with this crutch, its old age and its wisdom It whispers, "No, this will be the last" And the wind cries, "Mary”

“Grief is grey and damp, a marshland of emotions that suck you in, tendrils of mist that caress you, asphyxiate you. Grieving is the journey you do alone, a penitence, a pilgrimage, an affirmation of being alive in the face of death that shadows us, every waking moment. Grief was the country I was on a pilgrimage within, searching for redemption from my grieving.”

“Must we forsake the love of excellence, then, till every citizen feels it alike? I did not fight, Anytos, to be crowned where I have not run; but for a City where I can know who my equals really are, and my betters, to do them honour; where a man’s daily life is his own business; and where no one will force a lie on me because it is expedient, or some other man’s will.” The words seemed, as I spoke, to be my own thoughts that I owed to no one, only to some memory in my soul; but when I looked beyond the Stadium, to where they were kindling the lights on the High City in the falling dark, I saw the lamps of Samos shine through a doorway, and the wine-cup standing on the table of scoured wood. Then the pain of loss leaped out on me, like a knife in the night when one has been on one’s guard all day. The world grew hollow, a place of shadows; yet none would hold out the cup of Lethe to let me drink.”