Category: words

“Why go low? It is a counter-intuitive action, running against the grain of sense and the gradient of…”

“Why go low? It is a counter-intuitive action, running against the grain of sense and the gradient of the spirit. Deliberately to place something in the underland is almost always a strategy to shield it from easy view. Actively to retrieve somethin from the underland almost always requires effortful work. The underland’s difficulty of access has long made it a means of symbolizing what cannot openly be said or seen: loss, grief, the mind’s obscure depths, and what Elaine Scarry calls the ‘deep subterranean fact’ of physical pain.”

- Robert Macfarlane, Underland: A Deep Time Journey.

“The snow lay thin and apologetic over the world. That wide grey sweep was the lawn, with the…”

“The snow lay thin and apologetic over the world. That wide grey sweep was the lawn, with the straggling trees of the orchard still dark beyond; the white squares were the roofs of the garage, the old barn, the rabbit hutches, the chicken coops. Further back there were only the flat fields of Dawson’s farm, dimly white-striped. All the broad sky was grey, full of more snow that refused to fall. There was no colour anywhere.”

- Susan Cooper, The Dark Is Rising.

“She knew perfectly well that things like parties and best friends and going to tea with people were…”

“She knew perfectly well that things like parties and best friends and going to tea with people were fine for everyone else, because everyone else was “inside” - inside some sort of invisible magic circle. But Anna herself was outside. And so these things had nothing to do with her. It was as simple as that.”

- Joan G. Robinson, When Marnie Was There.

“A book is a physical object in a world of physical objects. It is a set of dead symbols. And then…”

“A book is a physical object in a world of physical objects. It is a set of dead symbols. And then the right reader comes along, and the words—or rather the poetry behind the words, for the words themselves are mere symbols—spring to life, and we have a resurrection of the word.”

- Jorge Luis Borges, This Craft of Verse.

“Frodo woke and found himself lying in bed. At first he thought that he had slept late, after a long…”

“

Frodo woke and found himself lying in bed. At first he thought that he had slept late, after a long unpleasant dream… Or perhaps he had been ill? But the ceiling looked strange; it was flat, and it had dark beams richly carved. He lay a little while longer looking at patches of sunlight on the wall, and listening to the sound of a waterfall.

‘Where am I, and what is the time?’ he said aloud to the ceiling.

'In the House of Elrond, and it is ten o'clock in the morning.’ said a voice. 'It is the morning of October the twenty-fourth, if you want to know.’

'Gandalf!’ cried Frodo, sitting up. There was the old wizard, sitting in a chair by the open window.

'Yes,’ he said, 'I am here. And you are lucky to be here, too, after all the absurd things you have done since you left home.’

”

- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring.