"Myimagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it." -Ursula Le Guin, "Winged: the Creatures on my Mind," in Harper's, 1990 Image: Found Title: Nod to Mahmoud Darwish, from “Who Am I, Without Exile?” fromThe Butterfly’s Burden
"For words are clumsy mountaineers and clumsy miners. Not for them to
bring down treasures from the mountains’ peaks, or up from the
mountains’ bowels."
-Franz Kafka, in a letter written to Selma Kohn [Source: Letters to Friends, Family, and Editors, trans. by Richard and Clara Winston]
“The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.”
"Is it easier for a man to live his life again as a fish, than to accept
the wonder of being human? So alone, so frightened, so wanting for what
we are afraid to give tongue to.”
-Richard Flanagan
Images:
(1) Pierre Belon, Monk Fish from Harvard University Library’s copy of ‘De Aquatilibus’
(2) Ajā’ib al-makhlūqāt wa-gharā’ib al-mawjūdāt - كتاب عجائب المخلوقات وغرائب الموجودات) by Zakarīyā’ ibn Muḥammad al-Qazwīnī, originally published in 1283.