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p45 the idea of knowledge of things making the world feel incestuous - the more we know (not understand), the more we convince ourselves that the world as we understand it is “truth”, and shut ourselves off from the actual outside world which is many times more expansive.

Stream of consciousness - but somehow such a natural flow of apparent tangents and distractions that makes it so hard to put down. Maybe better described as a stream of consciousness and subconsciousness?

“Losing things can sometimes give you a space in which to live.”

“There was a strange correlation between Vienna in 1919 and Tokyo in 1947, he said. If you haven’t been so low, you don’t know how you can build something, you can’t measure what you’ve built. You will always think it is due to someone else.”

“My first glass of wine. It was completely different from how wine was when you took only a sip. It tasted completely different when you drank it in a quantity and swallowed it down.”

First published in 1948, these letters of advice on how best a young devil might tempt humans is surprisingly - and perhaps reassuringly - timeless.