I shielded my brain from the Maximum Leader’s words, and for most of the day I succeeded. The words bounced off my ears and fell to the ground mortally wounded, gasping for meaning. – Carlos Eire, Waiting for Snow in Havana, p. 359

the strength with which people whose lives are almost completely behind them hang on to the wretched bits of carcass that are left. – Etty Hillesum, Letters From Westerbork, p. 278 One should be able to write fairy stories here. … I have to stop right in the middle of the fairy

Leading lights from cultural and political circles in the big cities have also been stranded on this barren stretch of heath five hundred by six hundred metres. With one mighty convulsion all their scenery has collapsed about them, and now they stand around a little hesitantly and awkwardly on this

At this moment, the lights are being turned off in the men’s barracks. But was there ever a real light in them? – Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life, p. 205 – from camp diary, Eli Leskley I once thought, “I would like to feel the contours of these times with my

ants mine the salt on my skin stretched out again on the riverbank    my daughter takes the remains, my blood puppet, to bed, like a flopsy bunny    ants seethe in the grass by the river, the river which sounds so nice    it bubbles in pools in the mud-coloured rocks, running

Gelassenheit. What a concept. The Meister came up with it. It’s what we should aim for, he taught. The state of letting go. Letting-go-ness. You even have to let go of God, he warned. “I pray God may rid me of God,” he said. Maybe a German can let