From my village I see as much of the universe as you can see from earth,
So my village is as big as any other land
For I am the size of what I see,
Not the size of my height.
-Fernando Pessoa as Alberto Caeiro, The Keeper of Sheep
Perhaps reading and writing books is one of the last defences human dignity has left, because in the end they remind us of what God once reminded us before He too evaporated in this age of relentless humiliations-that we are more than ourselves; that we have souls. And more, moreover.
Or perhaps not.
-Richard Flanagan, Gould's Book of Fish
The cure for loneliness is solitude.
-Marianne Moore, from the essay
"If I Were Sixteen Today"
Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.
-Franz Kafka, Dearest Father: Stories and Other Writings