E. E SCOTT

“2 November. This morning, for the first time in a long time, the joy again of imagining a knife twisted in my heart.”

-Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

Albert Camus, The Fall Originally published: 1956

The many wrongly addressed letters. Then the unsent ones. Followed by the unwritten ones. And at last — again — the poem: the breathed breve... a few syllables too long. — (Wave shorts. Wave troughs. No crests at all.)

– Paul Celan, trans. Pierre Joris

Seraphine Saintclair, “The Winglessness”

Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War

“It isn’t necessary that you leave home. Sit at your desk and listen. Don’t even listen, just wait. Don’t wait, be still and alone. The whole world will offer itself to you.”

— Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms

Beautiful Japanese nature-related diction, from Haruhiko Kindaichi’s The Japanese Language (translated by Umeyo Hirano):

hana-gumori — a hazy sky in the cherry-blossom season; literally, flower cloudiness harumeku — to become more like spring akimeku — to become more like autumn kareru — the death of plants edaburi — the way a tree branches hanafubuki — flowers falling in the wind like snowflakes konoshita-yami — darkness cast by dense trees kaerizaki — the unseasonable blooming of flowers; also the second blooming of spring flowers in autumn yosakura — the cherry blossoms viewed at night by torchlight; literally, night sakura

Alejandra Pizarnik, "Silences" from Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962 - 1972

“Think new things every day.”

— Democritus, Fragments, B158

“It is madness to hate all roses because you got scratched with one thorn.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupére