David

“You ask if everything dissolves like this
in a thin haze of memories,
if in this torpid hour or the breaker’s sigh
every destiny’s fulfilled.
I’d like to say no, that the moment
when you’ll pass out of time is rushing toward you;
maybe only those who want to become infinite,
and, who knows, you can do it; I cannot.”
― Eugenio Montale

“Anyone who has ever tried to write a novel knows what an arduous task it is, undoubtedly one of the worst ways of occupying oneself. You have to remain within yourself all the time, in solitary confinement. It's a controlled psychosis, an obsessive paranoia manacled to work completely lacking in the feather pens and bustles and Venetian masks we would ordinarily associate with it, clothed instead in a butcher's apron and rubber boots, eviscerating knife in hand. You can only barely see from that writerly cellar the feet of passers-by, hear the rapping of their heels. Every so often someone stops and bends down and glances in through the window, and then you get a glimpse of a human face, maybe even exchange a few words. But ultimately the mind is so occupied with its own act, a play staged by the self ofr the self in a hasty, makeshift cabinet of curiosities peopled by author and character, narrator and reader, the person describing and the person described, that feet, shoes, heels, and faces become, sooner or later, mere components of that act.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, Flights

“Every man’s soul is an independent universe, his death the extinction of the universe in miniature.”
― Henrik Pontoppidan, Lykke-Per

“Without the original human urge to develop, without the self-generated power that expresses itself as a passion (wether it be directed toward the real world or the world of thoughts or dreams) and without that strong, even bold courage to will to be oneself in all our divine nakedness, no one reaches real freedom.”
― Henrik Pontoppidan, Lykke-Per