Blood And Gold

I live lies because I cannot endure the weakness of anger, and I cannot admit the irrationality of love.

Memory was a curse, yes, he thought, but it was also the greatest gift. Because if you lost memory you lost everything.

No matter how long we exist, we have our memories. Points in time which time itself cannot erase. Suffering may distort my backward glances, but even to suffering, some memories will yield nothing of their beauty or their splendor. Rather they remain as hard as gems.

Oh, the lies that I have told myself and others. I knew it yet I didn't know.

The fact that I loved you was the greatest lie I have ever lived.

Sleep is your friend. Dreams are your unwelcome guests.

Anger is too pathetic. Anger is as weak as fear.

There's a bitter cold in me, a cold which comes from a distant land. And nothing ever really makes it warm. You knew of this cold. You tried a thousand times to melt it, and transform it to something more brilliant, but you never succeeded.

But I lived a lie. I lived it out of anger. This is what I am trying to tell you. I have lived lies. I have done it again and again. I live lies because I cannot endure the weakness of anger and I cannot admit the irrationality of love. Oh the lies I have told myself and others. I knew it yet I didn't know.

….it was a brave man’s fear. I knew what he meant. What must a brave general feel when he knows the battle has gone against him and nothing remains but death?

Of course the moment I saw the books, I was overcome with pleasure. This always happens with me. I feel foolishly safe with books which can be a mistake.

And so this young one, this young one whom I had so loved, I had to forsake, no matter how broken my heart, no matter how lonely my soul, no matter how bruised my intellect and spirit.

I find at moments I'm as fragile as glass.

You understood my soul, I thought, and now others are coming only to sack my heart of all its riches. What am I to do? We argued, yes, you and I, but it was with loving respect, was it not? I cannot endure without you. Please come to me, from wherever you are.

Had I ever loved anyone more than I loved him? Had I ever revealed more of my soul to anyone than I had revealed to him? If my tears spilled now, he would see them. If I trembled now, he would know.

The old gods will bring about vengeance not so much because they exist but because I once honored them.

I confided again that I wanted him, I wanted him to share my loneliness. I wanted him to share all that I could teach and give. Oh, the pain of it! All that I could teach and give.

Let my stories do what stories always do. Let them keep you from your darker dreams & from your darker journey. Let them keep you here.

I wanted shelves for my books, and a finer chair for this desk. Of course there should be another library. What was a house to me if it did not possess a library?

And then the most evil idea came to me. The idea came to me unbidden as if there really were a Satan in the world and that Satan had come crawling along the stone floor towards me and put the idea in my mind.

Don’t make a religion of reason and logic. Because in the passage of time reason may fail you and when it does, you may find yourself taking refuge in madness.

Lie quiet and you will lapse back into peace again. Be like the god Heimdall before the battle call, so still that you can hear the wool grow on the backs of sheep, and the grass grow far away in the lands where the snow melts.

I think this is a very important thing to understand about Christianity. It was from its very beginnings, it seems, a religion of great quarrels and wars, and it wooed the power of temporal authorities, and made them part of itself in the hope of resolving through sheer force its many arguments.

memory is desperate to leave us. Memory knows that we cannot endure its company. Memory would reduce us to fools.

An awareness had come over him that he wasn’t going to die. Loneliness in itself could not destroy him. Neglect was insufficient. And so he slept.

I dream of miracles but I cannot imagine them. I pray for mercy, yet I cannot envision how it would come about.

Most strange and wondrous, I thought, that the power of the mind was greater than the power of the hands.

Be wanderers through time, I said. Be witnesses of all splendid and beautiful things human. Be true immortals.

must somehow move to my restoration. I could not sink back in agony for that would breed but more agony. I must go on.

Surely time can take away such love. What a curse if it can’t.” “It can’t.” I said.