[Text ID: If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious. Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him?]
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
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Albert Camus throwing shade at Galileo
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The cities dissolve, and the earth is a cart loaded with dust
Only poetry knows how to pair itself to this space.
Adonis, “Desert” (trans. Khaled Mattawa)
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If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
W.H. Auden, “The More Loving One”
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These moments came less often now, and for the most part it seemed as though things had begun to change for him. He no longer wished to be bead. At the same time, it cannot be said that he was glad to be alive. But at least he did not resent it.
Paul Auster, City of Glass
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What do we mean by saying that existence precedes reality? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and defines himself afterwards.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Paul Sartre: Basic Writings
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Yourself—your soul—in pity give me all,
Withhold no atom’s atom or I die
John Keats, [I cry your mercy-pity-love! -aye, love!]
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Wind sings in its whirling,
water murmurs going by,
unmoving stone keeps still.
Octavio Paz, “Wind, Water, Stone” (trans. Eliot Weinberger)
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From a distance, above his house
a perplexed moon dangles
from threads of dust.
Adonis, “Desert” (trans. Khaled Mattawa)
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Turns out that lonely people are all the same.
Happy Together, dir. Wong Kar-Wai
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Forgiveness in families is a mystery to me, how it comes and how it lasts.
Alice Munro, “Forgiveness in Families”
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I liked it when our feet were aligned,
left with left, and struck the ground at the same time, leaving footprints on the shore that I wished to return to and, in secret, place my
foot where his had left its mark.
André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name
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I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion – I have shudder’d at it – I shudder no more – I could be martyr’d for my Religion – Love is my religion – I could die for that – I could die for you. My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet
John Keats, from a letter to Fanny Brawne (1819)
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The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you.
Sylvia Plath, Daddy
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[Text ID:‘You’re in a bad shape. It looks like you’re developing a soul.’
A soul? That strange, ancient, long-forgotten word. We sometimes used expressions like like ‘soul-mate.’ ‘body and soul,’ ‘soul-destroying,’ and so on, but soul...
‘That’s very dangerous,’ I murmured.
‘Incurable,’ the scissors snipped.
‘But... what is really going on? I don’t... I can’t understand.’]
Yevgeny Zamyatin, We (trans. Clarence Brown)
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