Mute as amber

When we speak of solitaries, we always take too much for granted. We think people know what we are talking about. But they know absolutely nothing. 

-Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

Art: Vilhelm Hammershoi, Baker's Shop, 1888 
Title: James Agee, excerpt from A Death in the Family

I studied the little girl and at last rediscovered my mother

“A novel is not a place one passes through; it is a place one inhabits.”

-Paulin Limayrac, “Du Roman acuel et de nos romanciers,” Revue des deux mondes from The Arcades Project. 

Image: Sergio Larrain, Passage Bavestrello, Valparaiso, Chili, 1952
Title: Selina Mayer

So Many Stones (Or: The Turret’s Cage is Shapely)

Wanting to write and not being able to find the time or the place for 

 

it. Wanting to write and not being able to find the time or the place for 

 

it. Wanting to write and not being able to find the time or the place for 

 

it. Wanting to write and not being able to find the time or the place for 

 

it. Wanting to write and not being able to find the time or the place 

 

for it. Wanting to write and not being able to find the time or the 

 

place for it. Wanting to write and not being able to find the time or 

 

the place for it. Wanting to write and not being able to find the time 

 

or the place for it. Wanting to write and not being able to find the 

 

time or the place for it. Wanting to write and not being able to find 

 

the time or the place for it.

-Raymond Carver, on "things too tedious to talk about" +

Image: Gao Xingjian, Forêt vierge, 2006

Title: Anna Akhmatova, from "Solitude"

You come back home to find yourself there

"And the day goes by, but time stands still."
— Knut Hamsun, Pan

Image: Cypraea tigris Linnaeus, 1758

Title: Attributed to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie