Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Perhaps only this echo of material interest can counterbalance the instinctive gesture of contemporary man: that of throwing things away.

[1980]

The sense of realism was so intense that the painting effortlessly achieved the effect sought by the old Flemish masters: the integration of the spectator into the pictorial whole, persuading him that the space in which he stood was the same as that represented in the painting, as if the picture were a fragment of reality, or reality a fragment of the picture.

Too much regard for others of course, and the android soon wears itself out in its efforts to serve.

n.

“If what you saw has anything in common with the Masons, it’s the fact that Bramanti’s rite is also a pastime for provincial politicians and professional men. It was thus from the beginning: Freemasonry was a weak exploitation of the Templar legend. And this is the caricature of a caricature. Except that those gentlemen take it extremely seriously. Alas! The world is teeming with Rosicrucians and Templars like the ones you saw this evening. You mustn’t expect any revelation from them, though among their number occasionally you can come across an initiate worthy of trust.”

Fear so debased people's thinking, they saw deceit in bravery, collaboration in courage.

As long as the son who has moved to the city visits his native village a few years later as if it were some exotic land, the nation to which he belongs will never be modern.

We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories

Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories.

While your body is always fixed at a particular point in space-time, your mind is always free to ramble in lands of make-believe. And it does.

The writer guides the way we imagine but does not determine it.