‘…But are they worthy to eat him? No, of course not. There is no one worthy of eating him from the manner of his behaviour and his great dignity.
I do not understand these things, he thought. But it is good that we do not have to try to kill the sun or the moon or the stars. It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers…’
(Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea)
Go, get lost.
This sadness I feel tonight is not my sadness.
‘She closed her eyes and let the wind sweep her hair across her face.
Oh, let me love.
She spoke quietly.
Let me be gentle.
Let me be full of the light.’
(Sue Zhao)
‘If the earth was a single state, Istanbul would be its capital.’ (Napoleon Bonaparte)
Maybe.
‘Today you have to make reality unreal in order to be able to bear it, because how can you speak in a world in which no one laughs anymore, except at someone else’s misery, in which no one cries anymore, except at their own misfortune.’ (Max Reinhardt)
‘One born in this city walks no less than a guild bedouin. And not because cars are scarce and expensive, not because of the miles long lines in front of the grocery stores. But because walking under this sky, over the quays of brown granite, along the broad grey river, is an expansion of the sense of life and a school of worldview.’
(Joseph Brodsky)
My silent walk is an enduring conversation, and all, people, houses, stones, flowers, oceans and skies, are a congeries of friends acting together on the stage of life, encased in the heavy cloak of fate.
This beautiful city
– and the sun is never exactly bright, never exactly dark, never for a long time dimmed,
but races continual eye dazzling wars, reaches everywhere throughout textures of clouds
and shows birds’ shining wings – (Jack Kerouac, Visions of Gerard)
A city to feel home.