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Are you lonely when I sleep?

My father used to say that there‘s no such thing as heroes or villains, that they only exist in storybooks. Which is ironic, since pretty much all of his beliefs came from what he read in works of fiction.

Lonely, finite humans may observe climatic provinces, fluctuations of annual weather and occasionally may observe such things as ‘This is a colder year than I’ve ever known.’ Such things are sensible. But humans are seldom alerted to the shifting average through a great span of years. And it is precisely in this alerting that humans learn how to survive on any planet. They must learn climate.

„Kannst Du lesen?“ „Nein, das ist eine der schwarzen Künste.“

Now we are either horrified or pretend to be horrified, though we really gloat over the spectacle, and love strong and eccentric sensations which tickle our cynical, pampered idleness. Or, like little children, we brush the dreadful ghosts away and hide our heads in the pillow so as to return to our sports and merriment as soon as they have vanished.

Far from offering a natural and objective window on the cinematic world, much of narrative cinema routinely aligns viewers with a male protagonist, „Making them share his uneasy gaze“.

It occurred to her that mercy was the ability to stop, if only for a moment. There was no mercy where there could be no stopping.

To have dinners, visits, carriages, rank and slaves to wait on one is looked upon as a necessity, for which life, honor and human feeling are sacrificed, and men even commit suicide if they are unable to satisfy it. We see the same thing among those who are not rich, while the poor drown their unsatisfied need and their envy in drunkenness. [...] I ask you is such a man free?

Humans live best when each has his own place, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things. Destroy the place and destroy the person.

‘I was thinking we’ll all be out of here soon and likely never see the place again.’ ‘Does that make you sad?’ ‘Sad? Nonsense! Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place.’