Life is never straightforward or emotionally black and white.
All whispers and echoes from a past that is gone teem into the sleeper's brain, and he is with them, and part of them.
I had build up false pictures in my mind and sat before them. I had never had the courage to demand the truth.
Every moment was a precious thing, having in it the essence of finality.
Sometimes it’s a sort of indulgence to think the worst of ourselves. We say, ‘Now I have reached the bottom of the pit, now I can fall no further,’ and it is almost a pleasure to wallow in the darkness. The trouble is, it’s not true. There is no end to the evil in ourselves, just as there is no end to the good. It’s a matter of choice. We struggle to climb, or we struggle to fall. The thing is to discover which way we’re going.
He was like someone sleeping who woke suddenly and found the world. . . all the beauty of it, and the sadness too. The hunger and the thirst. Everything he had never thought about or known was there before him, and magnified into one person who by chance, or fate--call it what you will--happened to be me.
The urge to climb will never be explained. In olden days, perhaps it was a wish to reach the stars. Today, anyone so minded can buy a seat on a plane and feel himself master of the skies. Even so, he will not have rock under his feet, or air upon his face; nor will he know the silence that comes only on the hills.
The idea of defending, as integral parts of our Empire, countries 10,000 miles off, like Australia, which neither pay a shilling to our revenue. . . nor afford us any exclusive trade. . . is about as quixotic a specimen of national folly as was ever exhibited.
If Donald Trump does lose, being revealed as this bizarre personality, Ted Cruz is not going to be what Republicans are looking for in 2020.
To have a choice at all is to be privileged.
There are ways in which art can have a longer reach than politics.