Wednesday, November 22, 2006

He’d never have believed he could become detached so quickly from the ordinary world—after only a few months’ absence. He’d heard about former employees in the Palace of Dreams who had in a manner of speaking withdrawn from life while they were still alive, and who, whenever they found themselves among people they used to know, looked as if they had just come down from the moon.

Ismail Kadare, The Palace of Dreams

Thursday, November 09, 2006

For there is no man’s reality around us that someone else is not dreaming about somewhere in this human ocean tonight, nor is there somebody’s dream that is not becoming the reality of another.

Milorad Pavic, Dictionary of the Khazars

Monday, November 06, 2006

You are like the girl who always rose late; when she married in the next village and for the first time had to rise early, she saw the hoarfrost on the fields and said to her mother-in-law, "We don’t have that in our village!" Like her, you think there is no love in the world, because you have never been awake early enough to encounter it, although every morning it is there on time....

Milorad Pavic, Dictionary of the Khazars

Thursday, November 02, 2006

And then I realized there was no more shutting of your eyes to the truth, no salvation in being blindfolded, no dream and reality, no being awake or asleep. Everything is one and the same continuing eternal day and world, coiling around you like a snake. That is when I saw vast, remote happiness as being small but close; when I perceived the great cause as empty, and the small as my love….

Milorad Pavic, Dictionary of the Khazars