There is no rest for the humble except in despising the great, whose only thought of the people is inspired by self-interest or sadism.

- Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night

David Bowie and his painting of Yukio Mishima

What a sanctuary, to sit head in hands, in the middle of the soul.

The Angelus (1859) by Jean-Francois Millet, depicting peasants praying over the potato harvest.

Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.

- Italo Calvino, from Invisible Cities, November 3, 1972

Milva

John Deakin - Lucian Freud (circa 1964)

Either one does not dream, or one does so interestingly. One should learn to spend one’s waking life in the same way: not at all, or interestingly.

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

Miss Serbia 1967 with a MiG-21

Truth – and life too – can be attained by us only when, by comparing a quality common to two sensations, we succeed in extracting their common essence and in reuniting them to each other, liberated from the contingencies of time.

— Byung-chul Han, The Scent of Time

Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you've felt that way.

A card from Cioran to Ernst Meister.