Venu Shekar

I had a very interesting find in the secondhand bookstore. An old edition (Sars Edition) of Mary Webb’s ´The Golden Arrow.’ It was perhaps a Christmas gift to a loved one in 1949, looking at the writing on front page. What a wonderful literary treasure.

..slit their throats with a sharp knife is as easy as jumping off a table. I have no wish to do either, nor will I wring anyone's neck.'" -Love Among Ruins, by Angela Thirkell

..what she meant was who was to kill the hen and whoever it was it wouldn't be himself. 'But Gilbert, it is quite easy to wring their necks if you know how.' said Mrs. Tebben. 'And i have been told by Lucy Marling, that rather terrifying Amazon,' said Mr.Tebben, 'that to

"Oh Gilbert, a knotty point. I think the red-speckled hen, the one we call Pandora, has really stopped laying and Louis Palmer is going to have some ten-day-old chicks to rear, so shall we kill Pandora? Mr. Tebben said that the hens were his wife's province and he supposed..

Be pitiful, O God! -The Cry of the Human Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The battle hurtles on the plains, Earth feels new scythes upon her; We reap our brothers for the wains, And the call the harvest -honor: Draw face to face, front line to line, One image all inherit, - Then kill, curse on, by that same sign, Clay-clay, and spirit-spirit

-The Cry of the Human Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The tempest stretches from the steep The shadow of it's coming, The beasts grow tame and near us creep, As help were in the human; Yet, while the cloud-wheels roll and grind, We spirits tremble under- The hills have echoes, but we find No answer for the thunder Be pitiful, O God!

.. into the present tense. Thrown over a precipice, you fall or else you fly; you clutch at any hope, however unlikely; however-If I may use such an overworked word - miraculous. What we mean by this is, against all odds." -The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood

"Some of the best things are done by those with nowhere to turn, by those who don't have time, by those who truly understand the word helpless. They dispense with the calculation of risk and profit, they take no thought for the future, they are forced to spearpoint ..

"El mundo está lleno de libros preciosos que nadie lee". Umberto Eco.

“To those who do not know that the world is on fire, I have nothing to say.” ―Bertolt Brecht

Victor Palla 📸 Lisboa, Portugal, 1950s

..from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it. Impossible, of course. I pay out my line, I pay out my line, this black thread I'm spinning across the page.' -The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood

'The only way to write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink ..

..for each individual, and it was just that original impulse, that internal heat, that feeling of one's self in one's own breast.' -Alexander's Bridge, Willa Cather

'The consciousness was life itself. Whatever took its place, action, reflection, the power of concentrated thought, were only functions of mechanism useful to society; things that could be brought in the market. There was only one thing that had an absolute value ..

'And in the course of one revolving moon was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.' -The Old Bank House, Angela Thirkell

But the tempo of modern life is too rapid, our presses turn out too much paper covered with print, which somehow makes its way to our seas and their shores, for nature to care of herself." -The Sea and its Shore, Elizabeth Bishop

"Of course according to the laws of nature, a beach should be able to keep itself clean, as cats do. We have all observed. 'The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth's human shore.'

"A sleeping germ of life thrilled and unfolded, and started out to seek the sun." -The Letters, Edith Wharton