rick.

“Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:”
― Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems

“But, however much life teaches you that nothing lasts, it is still a shock when it disappears. When the man you love with every fibre starts returning to the stars, an atom at a time.”
― Richard Osman, The Last Devil to Die

“Hour by hour the caissons reach down to the rock of the earth and hold the building to a turning planet.”
― Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems

“I am my mother’s caresses, and the serene kindness with which my father calmly guided me; I am my adolescent travels; I am what my reading has deposited in layers in my mind; I am my loves, my moments of despair, my friendships, what I’ve written, what I’ve heard; the faces engraved on my memory. I am, above all, the one who a minute ago made a cup of tea for himself. The one who a moment ago typed the word “memory” into his computer. The one who just composed the sentence that I am now completing. If all this disappeared, would I still exist? I am this long, ongoing novel. My life consists of it.”
― Carlo Rovelli, L'ordine del tempo