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Ilse
is currently reading
progress:
(page 8 of 276)
"Flaubert believed it was impossible to explain one art form in terms of another & great paintings required no words of explanation.Braque thought the ideal state would be reached when we said nothing at all in front of a painting.But we are very far from reaching that state.We remain incorrigibly verbal creatures who love to explain things, to form opinions.It is a rare picture which stuns,or argues, us into silence." — Jan 21, 2026 08:47AM
"Flaubert believed it was impossible to explain one art form in terms of another & great paintings required no words of explanation.Braque thought the ideal state would be reached when we said nothing at all in front of a painting.But we are very far from reaching that state.We remain incorrigibly verbal creatures who love to explain things, to form opinions.It is a rare picture which stuns,or argues, us into silence." — Jan 21, 2026 08:47AM
“Is this love reality
Or a dream?
I cannot know,
When both reality and dreams
Exist without truly existing.”
― The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan
Or a dream?
I cannot know,
When both reality and dreams
Exist without truly existing.”
― The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan
“At least let me now deceive myself with illusions
so as not to feel my empty life.
And yet I came so close so many times.
And yet how paralyzed I was, how cowardly;
why did I keep my lips sealed
while my empty life wept inside me,
my desires wore robes of mourning?
To have been so close so many times
to those sensual eyes, those lips,
to that body I dreamed of, loved.
To have been so close so many times.
September 1903”
―
so as not to feel my empty life.
And yet I came so close so many times.
And yet how paralyzed I was, how cowardly;
why did I keep my lips sealed
while my empty life wept inside me,
my desires wore robes of mourning?
To have been so close so many times
to those sensual eyes, those lips,
to that body I dreamed of, loved.
To have been so close so many times.
September 1903”
―
“The day breaks not: it is my heart.”
― The Complete English Poems
― The Complete English Poems
“Night, street and streetlight, drugstore,
The purposeless, half-dim, drab light.
For all the use live on a quarter century –
Nothing will change. There’s no way out.
–
You’ll die – and start all over, live twice,
Everything repeats itself, just as it was:
Night, the canal’s rippled icy surface,
The drugstore, the street, and streetlight.”
―
The purposeless, half-dim, drab light.
For all the use live on a quarter century –
Nothing will change. There’s no way out.
–
You’ll die – and start all over, live twice,
Everything repeats itself, just as it was:
Night, the canal’s rippled icy surface,
The drugstore, the street, and streetlight.”
―
“Awareness has infinite gradations, like light.”
― Bread and Wine
― Bread and Wine
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Ilse’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Ilse’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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