Jan

“Toen Socrates verteld werd dat iemand niet beter van een reis was teruggekeerd, zei hij: 'Natuurlijk niet, want die man had zichzelf meegenomen.' Waartoe gaan wij naar landen, verwarmd door een vreemde zon? Kan iemand mét zijn land ook zichzelf ontvluchten?”
― Michel de Montaigne

“Marcel explains that these episodes of alienation and disorientation lead him to wakeful nights spent in the long process of recollection, “remembering again all the places and people I had known, what I had actually seen of them, and what others had told me”. But beyond enabling the reflections and recollections that will inspire the novel, this opening episode initiates a pattern that will define and structure the entire three thousand pages to follow. Disruptions of habit, and the disorientation that follow them, are repeatedly figured as a painful but necessesary prerequisite to meaningful experience, be it artistic epiphany, the discovery of new love, or the appreciation of a longed-for journey.”
― Lisi Schoenbach, Pragmatic Modernism

“Dit hier zijn mijn gedachten, en daarmee probeer ik geen kennis over de dingen maar over mijzelf te verschaffen. Misschien zal ik nog eens kennis over de dingen krijgen, of heb ik die vroeger gehad, toen ik bij toeval op passages stuitte waar ze werden opgehelderd. Maar dat herinner ik mij niet meer. Want ook al lees ik nogal wat, er zit geen bodem in dit vat.”
― Michel de Montaigne

“The Chicken: As I was walking down Stanton Street early one Sunday morning, I saw a chicken a few yards ahead of me. I was walking faster than the chicken, so I gradually caught up. By the time we approached Eighteenth Avenue, I was close behind. The chicken turned south on Eighteenth. At the fourth house along, it turned in at the walk, hopped up the front steps, and rapped sharply on the metal storm door with its beak. After a moment, the door opened and the chicken went in. (Linda Elegant, Portland, Oregon)”
― Paul Auster, I Thought My Father Was God and Other True Tales from NPR's National Story Project