(The book, silly)
Barn Owl photo by Benjamin Joseph Andrew—A Room With A View
It’s a surprise and it’s so very pleasing. Rilke does that by changing from the expected (a child who begins to grow) to the art that is represented— the poem.
Kafka’s famous proclamation: “a book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.”
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard—love like all knowledge is recollection.
Where am I? What does it mean to say: the world? What is the meaning of that word? Who tricked me into this whole thing and leaves me standing here? Who am I? How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it, why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought from a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn’t it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager? I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint? ― Søren Kierkegaard
From the Arizona trip—Grand Canyon—2010
Mathematics would certainly have not come into existence if one had known from the beginning that there was in nature no exactly straight line, no actual circle, no absolute magnitude.~Friedrich Nietzsche
As quoted in The Puzzle Instinct : The Meaning of Puzzles in Human Life (2004) by Marcel Danesi, p. 71 from Human All-Too-Human
Nietzsche, it is said, went further into his own mind than anyone else had ever done or is likely to in future. It drove him crazy of course. And then I wonder, how would anyone know? No one could know, unless it is to be determined by what the thinker has written. A Buddhist monk has said that there are at least 30-some levels within the mind. At least that many that he had reached. And he had warned against attempting such a voyage, saying that madness lay in wait. The Grand Canyon of the mind, yes?
Writers Ink—Writing and Stuff 