David

“Jacob has begun to introduce himself not as before, not as Yankiele Leybowicz, but as Jacob Frank. Frank is what Jews from the west are called in Nikopol; that’s what they call his father-in-law and his wife, Hana. Frank, or Frenk, means foreign. Nahman knows Jacob likes this – being foreign is a quality of those who have frequently changed their place of residence. He’s told Nahman that he feels best in new places, because it is as if the world begins afresh every time. To be foreign is to be free.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob

“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

“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

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