Mieke

“To understand yourself: Is that a discovery or a creation?”
― Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon

“Isn't it true that it's not people who meet, but rather the shadows cast by their imaginations?”
― Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon

“Het zit hem dwars dat hij contact met haar heeft opgenomen, dat hij tegenover haar zijn zwakte heeft getoond. Dat wil zeggen zijn behoeftes, de zwaktes van een mens zijn uiteindelijk zijn behoeftes. Maar wat die behoeftes precies zijn, zijn behoeftes, weet hij niet. Hij weet alleen dat hij jarenlang heeft gedacht dat de mens het dier is dat zijn verlangens moet overwinnen, maar nu hij een gewond dier is vraagt hij zich af welke verlangens er nog over zijn en of het de moeite loont die te overwinnen.”
― Arnon Grunberg, Bezette gebieden

“Encounters between people, it often seems to me, are like trains passing at breakneck speed in the night. We cast fleeting looks at the passengers sitting behind dull glass in dim light, who disappear from our field of vision almost before we perceive them. Was it really a man and a woman who flashed past like phantoms, who came out of nothing into the empty dark, without meaning or purpose? Did they know each other? Did they talk? Laugh? Cry? People will say: That's how it is when strangers pass one another in rain and wind and there might be something in the comparison. But we sit opposite people for longer, we eat and work together, lie next to each other, live under the same roof. Where is the haste? Yet everything that gives the illusion of permanence, familiarity, and intimate knowledge: isn't it a deception invented to reassure, with which we try to conceal and ward off the flickering, disturbing haste because it could be impossible to live with all the time. Isn't every exchange of looks between people like the ghostly brief meeting of eyes between travellers passing one another, intoxicated by the inhuman speed and the shock of air pressure that makes everything shudder and clatter? Don't our looks bounce off others, as in the hasty encounter of the night, and leave us with nothing but conjectures, slivers of thoughts and imagined qualities? Isn't it true that it's not people who meet, but rather the shadows cast by their imaginations?”
― Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon