I was going through my books the other day and rediscovered my copy of In The Country Of Last Things by Paul Auster. This happens to be my favorite book in case you were wondering.
“That is what I mean by being wounded: you cannot merely see, for each thing somehow belongs to you, is part of the story unfolding inside you. It would be good, I suppose to make yourself so hard that nothing could affect you anymore. But then you would be alone, so totally cut off from everyone else that life would become impossible.” (p. 19)
“I can safely report that the sky here is the same sky as the one above you. We have the same clouds and the same brightnesses, the same storms and the same calms, the same winds that carry everything along with them. If the effects are somewhat different here, that is strictly because of what happens below.” (p. 21) … one of my favorite quotes.
“The rain makes no distinctions. At one time or another, it falls on everyone, and when it fails, everyone is equal to everyone else–no one better, no one worse, everyone equal and the same.” (p. 28)
“It is a slow ineluctable process of erasure. Words tend to last a bit longer than things, but eventually they fade too, along with the pictures they once evoked. Entire categories of objects disappear…In effect, each person is speaking his own private language, and as the instances of shared understanding diminish, it becomes increasingly difficult to communicate with anyone.” (p. 89)
“It is only when we lose them that we ever notice the things we had. As soon as we get them back, we stop noticing them again.” (p. 141)
Wandering the Interwebs 