Kurt Vonnegut, From Mother Night; "Chapter Six Hundred & Fourty Three,"

I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the hearts affections and the truth of imagination - what the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth - whether it existed before or not.

- John Keats

We notice unusually beautiful things because they jolt us out of a state of unawareness. The secret is that we are surrounded by beauty everyday. We just have to make a conscious effort to notice and appreciate it.

paul and the lovely linda 🕊️

I long for a large room to myself, with books and nothing else, where I can shut myself up, and see no one, and read myself into peace.

Virginia Woolf, Letter to Violet Dickinson

musings on may

Franz Kafka Diaries, 1914-1923 | Felix Vallotton, The Dordogne with Carrenac (1925) | Vera Brittain, “Because You Died: Poetry and Prose of the First World War and After” | Jin Xingye | Haruki Murakami, "Norwegian Wood" | Jin Xingye

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She had created a dream world for herself. If the slightest thing happened in the normal world which did not conform to the laws of her dream world, her heart rose up in outrage and she was in pain.

Ivan Goncharov, The Same Old Story (1847)

Ireland, Iran & Lebanon