Wednesday, September 21, 2005

We prune our minds to fit them into the garden of ordinary life. We exclude from our consciousness all sorts of knowledge that we have acquired because it might distract us from the problems we must solve if we are to go on living, and it might even make us doubt whether it is prudent to live. But sometimes it is necessary for us to know where we are in eternity as well as time, and we must lift this ban. Then we must let our full knowledge invade our minds, and let our memories of birth crawl like serpents from their cave and our foreknowledge of death spread its wide shadow.

Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon

Saturday, September 03, 2005

The woman a man loves is in a sense his soul, or at any rate the answer to the call it makes.

Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon