Ned Hayes's Blog, page 116

"I need you, the reader, to imagine us, for we don’t really exist if you don’t."

“I need you, the reader, to imagine us, for we don’t really exist if you don’t.”

- Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (via kerryquotesquotes)

"Behind me a round window: a circle of light that stabs through...

"Behind me a round window: a circle of light that stabs through into the gloom of candles and dusty scrolls. Dust motes float in the beam of light and land upon the leg-irons and my blood-flecked tunic. The light from that window seems like a ghostly shape to me, an angel that hangs over all of us, silently judging every truth, every lie."

— from the novel Sinful Folk

“I like books that aren’t just lovely but that have memories in...

“I like books that aren’t just lovely but that have memories in themselves. Just like playing a song, picking up a book again that has memories can take you back to another place or another time.” 

“The sound of a distant ocean covers me with surf, that tide...

“The sound of a distant ocean covers me with surf, that tide that bears me back into the past, back to the place where I was born. People come through the whiteness, through the bright light, but all of them are ghosts.”

— from the novel SINFUL FOLK 

"We live for books."

“We live for books.”

- Umberto Eco (via book-pause)

"Stars steam away as a pale sun rises, hot coal dropped in a...

"Stars steam away as a pale sun rises, hot coal dropped in a watery sky. Light seeps across the forest as the reedy shrieks of wood fowl echo in the trees. The path from our village to the King’s Highway is a crooked line of mud rutted with cart tracks, a rough trough where the dirty snow is stabbed through by the hooves of feral sheep. To the east, that faint track leads up through the forest until it reaches, finally, the open country."

— from the novel Sinful Folk

PHOTO: dirtycolorado:

“Fog lifts in the valley, rising as mist through the bare...

“Fog lifts in the valley, rising as mist through the bare limbed trees. Far below, the deeping combe with our village in the heart of it. My whole world for nearly a decade has been contained in that place – and now the village of Duns is so small. I hold up my hand, form a circle with my fingers. Now the distant village seems a child’s plaything that I can hold in my own hand, wreathed in gossamer mist.”

— from the novel Sinful Folk

PHOTO: yasminegalenorn

"Some words build houses in your throat. And they live there, content and on fire."

“Some words build houses in your throat. And they live there, content and on fire.”

- Nayyirah Waheed (via perfect)

penamerican:How the priceless manuscripts in Timbuktu were...

:

How the priceless manuscripts in Timbuktu were saved from destruction

“Abba al-Hadi could not read any of the priceless manuscripts he gingerly placed into empty rice sacks each evening last August before spiriting them through Timbuktu’s darkening streets. The wiry septuagenarian had never learned to read or write but, having spent four decades working as a guard at the Ahmed Baba Institute, a state-run body responsible for the restoration and preservation of much of this storied town’s written heritage, he was all too aware of the value of the brittle pages bound in leather cases.

…

“For Abdoulaye Cissé and other guardians of Timbuktu’s heritage, the fact the crumbling manuscripts were almost lost forever has served to further reinforce their importance. Cissé points out that the books, which document so much about life as it was lived during Timbuktu’s rise and fall over centuries, challenge the notion that Africa’s history was exclusively oral until the arrival of European colonialists.

“‘These manuscripts are important not just for Timbuktu to remember its history but also to remind the world that Africa has a rich, written history contrary to what some once believed,’ says Cissé. ‘Losing even a fraction is a tragedy.’”

“The day wanes until the sun is caught once more in the net of...

“The day wanes until the sun is caught once more in the net of the darkening sky. I struggle ahead of the cart now, into the tracks. I pretend the wind covers his words, that I cannot hear him. Ice cuts through the canvas rags on my feet, but still my curiosity about these footprints compels me. I pretend to stumble, and I fall to the ground so my face is close to the trail.”

— from the novel Sinful Folk

PHOTO: fiore-rosso: Santiago Porter. De la serie PIEZAS 2002.