This is the fifty-seventh chapter in Other People’s Thoughts, a China Heritage series inspired by a compilation of quotations put together by Simon Leys (Pierre Ryckmans), one of our Ancestors, during his reading life.

Pierre remarked that the resulting modest volume of quotations was ‘idiosyncratically compiled for the amusement of idle readers’ (see Simon Leys, Other People’s Thoughts, 2007). Our aim is similar: to amuse our readers (idle or otherwise); as is our modus operandi: to build up an idiosyncratic compilation, one that reflects the interests of The Wairarapa Academy for New Sinology and its coterie.

In collecting this material, and by adding to it over time, we accord also with a Chinese literary practice in which quotations — sometimes called yǔlù 語錄, literally ‘recorded sayings’ — have a particular history, and a powerful resonance.

The most famous collection of recorded sayings is The Analects 論語, compiled by disciples of Confucius. Then there is the timeless 5000-words of Laozi’s The Tao and the Power 道德經, as well as the Chan/Zen 禪宗 tradition of what in English are known by the Japanese term kōan 公案, dating from the Tang dynasty. Modern imitations range from the political bon mots of Mao Zedong to excerpts from the prolix prose of Xi Jinping’s tireless speech writers, and published snippets from arm-chair philosophers and motivational speakers.

Other People’s Thoughts also finds inspiration in the ‘poetry talks’ 詩話, ‘casual jottings’ 筆記 and ‘marginalia’ 眉批 of China’s literary tradition.

My thanks to Roger Pulvers, early mentor and long-time friend, for allowing me to include his translation of ‘Creation’ by Anna Akhmatova.

— Geremie R. Barmé
Editor, China Heritage
30 April 2025

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Other People’s Thoughts I-LVI:

• Other People’s Thoughts, China Heritage

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Other People’s Thoughts, LVII

A Decent Man in Indecent Times

Today’s builders of Babel tell us that there is no room for losers, and that those who fall along the way are losers. Theirs is the construction site of hell. God’s economy, on the other hand, does not kill, discard or crush. It is lowly, faithful to the earth.

— Pope Francis, 18 April 2025

OnlyFans

Kristi Noem is now 48% silicone, 15% recycled fiberglass, 12% polyester, 2% “human-adjacent” byproducts, 8% mold-resistant caulking and 15% asbestos. On one hand, she’s toxic landfill, but she’s also dishwasher safe.

— Paul Rudnick, 31 March 2025

Columbia

I now think that one might be better off, if one is intelligent and has his wits about him, remaining [in the Middle East]. America is so utterly crazy now, and exactly those people who should be guiding its collective life — i.e., people with intellect and mind — are so totally alienated from its collective life, that it’s pretty horrible to watch the national life go down the drain.

— Edward Said, writing to his sister Joyce in December 1967

Other universities are being attacked through Columbia and not only because of the Israel-Palestine crisis, its proximate cause. The real target is the university Said embodied — an idea more than a place: the model of the humanities as public conscience; the voice of a broad, nonspecialized, intelligence without any particular expectation of profit, putting itself in danger in the name of truth alone. This is ultimately what the lawyers, legislators, and think-tank stalwarts of the pro-Israel team revile.

— Timothy Brennan, Said’s Specter, 14 April 2025

The German universities failed, while there was still time, to oppose publicly with all their power the destruction of knowledge and of the democratic state. They failed to keep the beacon of freedom and right burning during the night of tyranny.

The cost of such failure was great… academic standards fell dizzily… there was not only a shortage of young men in the sciences and engineering but a decline in their qualifications.

Nazi Germany’s loss, as it turned out, was the free world’s gain…

— William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

Love

“I’m positive that love exists,” he said, “and is available to us all the time.” He didn’t mean the phenomenon of being in love, he insisted, but rather “a vibration that is — and is at our beck and call.”

— Richard Chamberlain, d. 20 March 2025

Scientific Counter-revolution

Demagoging vaccination might be the closest we come to book-burning in our misadventure with fascism. Heroic feats of scientific ingenuity save more and more lives every year, yet a cultish movement of obscurantist reactionaries would rather deprive themselves of that knowledge than credit their cultural enemies for it. It’s as if a decade of nationalist invective against “progressives” left the White House with no choice but to try to tear down America’s most obvious example of meaningful progress.

— Nick Catoggio, Literally and Seriously, The Dispatch, 31 March 2025

Necessary Trouble

These are not normal times in America, and they should not be treated as such. This is our moral moment. This is when the most precious ideas of our country are being tested…. Where does the Constitution live, on paper or in our hearts?

… This is a moral moment. It’s not left or right, it’s right or wrong.

— Cory Booker, US senator, 1 April 2025

Same Old New Dawn

“I feel liberated,” said a top banker. “We can say ‘retard’ and ‘pussy’ without the fear of getting cancelled… it’s a new dawn.” — It’s not really a “new” dawn, is it. It’s the same old rich straight white rich guy dawn, back after a few years’ rest.

— Alex Andreou, @sturdyalex.bsky.social, 4 April 2025

Trump’s Makeup

It’s not so much foundation any more as cosmetic bukkake.

— Marina Hyde, Are Trump’s tariffs for real or an AI hallucination? I’m afraid the answer is both, The Guardian, 4 April 2025

State of the Union

We have a deeply stupid government—from our economically illiterate president to our craven and foolish secretary of state, from the freelancing billionaire dilettante who is gutting American soft power to the vaccine-denying health secretary who is firing as much talent as he can. From the senior economics advisor who thinks comic books are good investments, to the senators who voted to confirm this cabinet of hacks, to the representatives who stumble over themselves justifying each new inane MAGA pronouncement.

But also, we have the government we deserve.

The American age is over. And it ended because the American people were no longer worthy of it.

— Jonathan V. Last, The American Age Is Over, The Bulwark, 4 April 2025

American Fascists, a definition

The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity ….

They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.

— Vice President Henry A. Wallace Defines ‘American Fascism’, The New York Times, 9 April 1944

螺絲釘精神

…the armies of millions of people — well, remember, the army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little, little screws to make iPhones, that kind of thing is going to come to America. It’s going to be automated and great Americans — the tradecraft of America, is going to fix them, is going to work on them. They’re going to be mechanics. There’s going to be HVAC specialists. There’s going to be electricians, the tradecraft of America. Our high school educated Americans — the core to our workforce, is going to have the greatest resurgence of jobs in the history of America to work on these high-tech factories, which are all coming to America. That’s what’s going to build our next generation of America.

— Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, ‘Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan’, CBS News, 6 April 2025

Trump Tariffs Parmigiano-Reggiano

I will not go back to the green shaker of unrefrigerated dust that America calls Parm, has the balls to call Parm. I am not interested in eating eggplant à la dandruff.

— Stephen Colbert, The Late Show, 4 April 2025

管什麼稅

什麼加稅導致社會巨變，揭竿而起……都不說三千年餓殍遍野，易子而食，只要給口吃的就感謝皇恩浩蕩。就說本朝，藉口蘇修卡我們脖子，幾億人啃了三年樹皮，民兵端著槍守在村口，偷摸逃出去的都算勇士。

也不說98年總理大手一揮，一句“改革”，六千萬工人下崗，基本盤穩得很。就像電影《鋼的琴》里那群東北下崗工人，有的淪落街頭，有的拉起樂隊在婚禮火葬場做紅白喜事，有的靠倒賣廢棄鋼材被抓，有的當小偷撬門溜鎖，還有賣豬肉的，有去當小姐的……但人們按著中央的話語，說這叫“解放思想”。

“工人要替國家想，我不下崗誰下崗”，這是1999年春晚黃宏的小品，你現在覺得反人性，那時台下一片掌聲，民間也很亢奮，忽然覺得自己有了力量。人們很容易站在國家立場把自己當炮灰，人民愛黨愛國，所以操心什麼加稅，川普還能比斯大林同志赫魯曉夫同志更狠嗎，生活還能比毛主席時代更糟嗎。不就是農產品啊牛肉啊芯片貴些，股票跌些，本來就生存艱難的工廠關的多些，大街上發呆眼神迷茫的人多些，跳樓的年輕人密集些，河裡總能撈出不明來歷的浮屍……但十五億人民，會迅速稀釋掉這些人和事。比例極小，信心極大，我們祖祖輩輩在從人到豬的生活轉換適應力上，一直為世間翹楚。

民心所向，正好武統。

這正是想要的。沒有一個帝王會關心你的生活質量，他只關心權力和帝國版圖是否穩當。

而這莫名其妙又會和人民的想法高度契合，幾千年來如此。所以聊一會兒就會散的，一定散的，只是會在明年春晚以另一種高度正能量的形式展現。

您保重。

— 李承鵬，我們的壁畫時代和皮夾克的未來，2025年4月9日

Trump Netanyahu

Each is a wannabe autocrat, each is working to undermine the rule of law and so-called elites in his respective country, each is seeking to crush what he calls a “deep state” of government professionals. Each is steering his nation away from its once universal aspiration to be a “light unto the nations” toward a narrow, brutish might-equals-right ethnonationalism that is ready to mainstream ethnic cleansing. Each treats his political opposition not as legitimate but as enemies within, and each has filled his cabinet with incompetent hacks, deliberately chosen for loyalty to him instead of the laws of their lands.

Each is driving his country away from its democratic traditional allies. Each asserts territorial expansion as a divine right — “From the Gulf of America to Greenland” and “From the West Bank to Gaza.”

— Thomas Friedman, Trump and Netanyahu Steer Toward an Ugly World, Together, The New York Times, 8 April 2025

MAGA Maoism

What we’re seeing is a kind of MAGA Maoism, remixed for the algorithm age. Like the Chinese Cultural Revolution, it glorifies physical labor as moral purification, only now the purification is from the supposed “wokeness” of desk work, filtered through TikTok, X and Twitch. It’s not about creating jobs. It’s about creating vibes: strong men doing hard things, reshared until they become ideology. As one MAGA influencer put it, “Men in America don’t need therapy. Men in America need tariffs and DOGE. The fake email jobs will disappear.”

— Ed Kilgore, Trump’s Plan for Laid-Off Federal Workers: Get a Factory Job, New York Magazine, 8 April 2025

AI Roasts Musk

Elon, you’re like a self-driving Tesla, obscenely expensive, prone to crashing and perpetually promising features that never quite materialize. You tweet about colonizing Mars while simultaneously struggling to manage a social media platform. You call yourself a free-speech absolutist, but ban critics faster than a Tesla accelerates from zero to 60.

You claim to be a champion of innovation, yet your most notable achievements involve rebranding existing technologies and making questionable business decisions. You’re the embodiment of all hype, no substance, a walking, talking meme powered by ego and daddy’s emerald minds. In short, this is a perfect example of how not to use AI.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some whale songs to decipher. They probably contain more intelligence than your entire Twitter feed.”

— Our AI Brutally Roasts Elon Musk, Live at SXSW, Life with Machines podcast, 8 Apr 2025

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.

— Mahatma Gandhi

AI Ps and Qs

Someone posted on X last week: “I wonder how much money OpenAI has lost in electricity costs from people saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to their models.”

The next day, Mr. Altman responded: “Tens of millions of dollars well spent — you never know.”

— Solan Deb, Saying ‘Thank You’ to ChatGPT Is Costly. But Maybe It’s Worth the Price., The New York Times, 24 April 2025

Should I stay or should I go?

The optimists all died in the gas chambers, the pessimists all have pools in Beverly Hills.

— Billy Wilder, 1945

The Times We Live In

— 張鳴善 Zhang Mingshan  (fl. 14th c.), 譏時 ‘The Times We Live In’, translated by Brendan O’Kane

Citizens

Citizens are not subjects, and do not bow down before power. They are not “the worthless little people” trampled on like ants amid historical changes. They are not docile subjects, who have duties but no rights, and who must obey and endure mistreatment. They are not a hateful mob, ruthlessly burning, killing and looting. Citizens are the people of a democratic, rule of law-based free nation. Citizens are independent and free individuals, who share the happiness, as well as bear responsibility, of a just order –– they are upright, fair, peaceful, and rational.

— Xu Zhiyong, A Beautiful China – Thirteen – The Citizens Movement, translated by Andréa Worden, 28 August 2024

改裝

總有人跑來跟我聊未來、聊時代，有的焦慮，有的樂觀，要麼“醉後不知天在水,滿船清夢壓星河”，要麼“一生負氣成今日，四海無人對夕陽”。我說對於未來對於時代，愚蠢的我也迷糊得很，只是想起一篇回憶：1979年修建首都機場，建設總指揮李瑞環找到中央美院，拍板決定候機樓啓用壁畫這種藝術形式，剛從雲南采風回京的袁運生就是主創之一。候機樓建成後，壁畫展出，人們一片贊嘆和震驚，因為袁運生創作的《生命的贊歌》，是幾個裸體傣族少女在沐浴，一絲不掛，身材曼妙。一時社會震動，市民們爭先恐後坐著大巴前往機場候機樓一探究竟，連海外媒體也報道：中國在公共場所出現了女人裸體，預示了真正意義上的改革開放。

也有反對的聲音，認為有傷風化，“怎麼也得加條褲衩子吧”，或者撤掉壁畫。還有人認為這敗壞了社會主義道德，建議把袁運生以流氓罪抓進秦城監獄。當時的中宣部部長王任重找到袁運生談話。袁運生堅決反對撤畫，“只要撤畫，就是醜聞”。壁畫沒撤，卻等來了鄧小平視察機場，他特別高興，看得很細緻：為什麼有人反對畫人體啊，這有什麼好反對的，我看機場壁畫很好，要是能在城裡畫一個更好，讓老百姓都能看到。

袁運生還用四川口音轉述鄧小平的一句話：

我看可以嘛！

“我看可以嘛”，這就是一個時代。

歷經多年，世事沈浮，裸體少女壁畫先被布簾遮住，再後來，乾脆被三合板釘死。這又是另一個時代。

李嘉誠撤資那會兒，一個源起霍英東卻假托李嘉誠的頗具深意的段子說：多年以前，李嘉誠每次到首都機場，都要看看裸體少女畫還在不在，每次都在，於是放心投資大陸。多年以後，有一天他發現裸女畫被撤了，臉色大變，轉身就走，撤走所有投資，不留下一絲雲彩。

你問這是什麼時代，將迎來怎樣的未來……最新的消息：硅谷大佬，身家相當於三個李嘉誠的黃仁勳來到北京，面謁領袖，20多年都穿著皮衣甚至在加州大熱天也不換裝的黃仁勳，忽然改成了中式行政夾克，對，就是你熟悉的那種“廳局風”。

黃仁勳的畫風突變，跟首都機場候機樓撤下壁畫，沒什麼區別。你該知道，這是什麼時代，我們將面臨怎樣的未來……

— 李承鵬，我們的壁畫時代和皮夾克的未來，2025年4月22日

川普鐵粉

如果他加關稅你贊成，延期加關稅你也贊成，取消關稅你也贊成，第二天又加關稅你還贊成，第三天又延期你還贊成，第四天又取消你還贊成，那你跟舉手機器申紀蘭真沒啥區別。

— 慕容雪村，2025年4月14日

Upgrades

If anybody wants to know why Gen X is always mad, it’s because we had to replace our record collections with a tape collection that we had to replace with a CD collection that we had to replace with an MP3 collection, and now we need a subscription to listen to music.

— read online

Where human beings remove their masks

The walls of hospitals have heard more honest prayers than churches…
They have witnessed far more sincere kisses than those in airports…
It is in hospitals that you see a homophobe being saved by a gay doctor.
A privileged doctor saving the life of a beggar…
In intensive care, you see a Jew taking care of a racist…
A police officer and a prisoner in the same room receiving the same care…
A wealthy patient waiting for a liver transplant, ready to receive the organ from a poor donor…
It is in these moments, when the hospital touches the wounds of people, that different worlds intersect according to a divine design. And in this communion of destinies, we realize that alone, we are nothing.
The absolute truth of people, most of the time, only reveals itself in moments of pain or in the real threat of an irreversible loss.
A hospital is a place where human beings remove their masks and show themselves as they truly are, in their purest essence. …

— Pope Francis, April 2025

Elon Musk on a Scale from One to Ten

Elon Musk is going to burn America to the ground because nobody thought he was funny. Yeah. Because nobody laughed. And because he needed surgeries to look handsome adjacent if you’re not wearing your glasses and it’s foggy.

You know how many surgeries he’s had to look like a five? He’s a five. This guy, he’s going to ruin democracy because he was born a three. And then he put millions of dollars into becoming a five. He’s a born three with dreams and delusions of being an eight. He knows deep down he’s not getting to ten. So we’ve got a born three dreaming of eight landing at five. He’s got an army of twos that we’re calling Doge and now we don’t get to have democracy anymore because the right girls didn’t want to sleep with him.

— Caleb Hearon, So True with Caleb Hearon podcast, 10 April 2025

Limey Bullshit

The other night, I was asked to read at the annual SpeakEasy literary gala, hosted by Dr. Amanda Foreman, Jonathan Barton, and Lucas Wittman, who had the inspired idea of asking presenters to read from unexpected letters between writers, publishers, editors, and lovers. (I read the delicious rejection of Animal Farm that T.S. Eliot wrote to George Orwell when Eliot was director of Faber & Faber publishing house in the UK. “Your pigs are far more intelligent than the other animals, and therefore the best qualified to run the farm.”) But the rejection letter that should be pinned up on the wall behind every weary editor searching for ways to politely tell a lofty byline that what he or she delivered was dashed-off tepid gruel (or, as old-guard New Yorker editors used to call it, “a useful piece,” which I rebranded as “a useless piece”) was from Hunter S. Thompson to the British novelist Anthony Burgess. Why the gonzo literary lunatic Hunter was playing an editorial role for Jann Wenner at Rolling Stone on the national affairs desk at the time is unclear. But I offer his letter here in all its glory. The actor Richard Kind read it with mad gusto.

August 17, 1973

Dear Mr. Burgess,

Herr Wenner has forwarded your useless letter from Rome to the National Affairs Desk for my examination and/or reply. Unfortunately, we have no International Gibberish Desk, or it would have ended up there.

What kind of lame, half-mad bullshit are you trying to sneak over on us? When Rolling Stone asks for “a thinkpiece,” goddamnit, we want a fucking Thinkpiece … and don’t try to weasel out with any of your limey bullshit about a “50,000 word novella about the condition humaine, etc….”

Do you take us for a gang of brainless lizards? Rich hoodlums? Dilettante thugs?

You lazy cocksucker. I want that Thinkpiece on my desk by Labor Day. And I want it ready for press. The time has come & gone when cheapjack scum like you can get away with the kind of scams you got rich from in the past.

Get your worthless ass out of the piazza and back to the typewriter. Your type is a dime a dozen around here, Burgess, and I’m fucked if I’m going to stand for it any longer.

Sincerely,

Hunter S. Thompson

— Tina Brown, Fresh Hell, 28 March 2025

Donald Trump’s Second Coming

We asked the president if his second term felt different from his first. He said it did. “The first time, I had two things to do—run the country and survive; I had all these crooked guys,” he said. “And the second time, I run the country and the world.”

— Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer, I Run the Country and the World, The Atlantic, 28 April 2025

你以为我们scared其实我们不care

Victor Gao: … China is fully prepared to fight to the very end because the world is big enough that the United States is not the totality of the market in the world. So if the United States wants to go in that direction of completely shutting itself out of the China market, be my guest. …

China is fully prepared to fight to the very end because the world is big enough that the United States is not the totality of the market in the world. So if the United States wants to go in that direction of completely shutting itself out of the China market, be my guest.

Cathy Newman: Yeah, and China will lose the US market, which, as I’ve said, is 15%.

Victor Gao: We don’t care. China has been here for 5,000 years. Most of the time, there was no United States and we survived. And if the United States wants to bully China, we will deal with the situation without the United States, and we expect to survive for another 5,000 years.

— ‘If the US wants to shut itself out, be my guest’, Channel 4 News, 10 April 2025

奉陪到底

5千年的歷史包括茹毛飲血和留辮子；最近76年發生過餓死數千萬人、文化大革命、六四，不知道高志凱想要哪一個？

— 高瑜，2025年4月13日

Hobby Horsing

If this is the peak of human evolution, I’m cashing out.
Call the aliens. Beam me the fuck up and send the comet.
At least up there, no one’s doing cardio with a fuckin stuffed bridle between their thighs yelling, “Come on, Buttercup!”

You want sports?
Try being a parent, walking four huskies on ice, while your cat plots your death.
Now THAT’S Olympic.

Now go touch some grass — and take that ‘horse’ with you…and throw it in the dumpster!

— Rent Free, X, 13 April 2025

Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge

Why, I asked Vietnam’s foreign minister, Mr Thach, didn’t you appeal to the UN when you were attacked by the Khmer Rouge, instead of invading?
“We do not have such a high regard for the UN as you do,” he said.
“How so?”
His reply was devastating. “Because during the last 40 years we have been invaded by four of the five permanent members of the security council.”

— Chris Mullin, ‘A new reality began to dawn’: the fall of Saigon, 50 years on, Financial Times, 12 April 2025

Typos

“I see that you have made 3 spelling mistakes.”

— Marquis de Favras after reading his death sentence before being hanged in 1790

偷來全世界 難偷新文明

他站在世界的展台前，身後是高鐵、火箭、虛擬支付與數據帝國；他舉起榮耀的獎杯，展示一張被標記為“自主”的圖紙，但圖紙上的筆觸分明顫抖，像是臨摹者最後一次抄寫前的手抖。

他偷了機器，偷了邏輯，偷了算法的骨架，卻拒絕偷竊支撐這一切的文明主幹。他從不學習“權利”、“義務”、“自由”、“民主”這些基本的價值觀念。

他從不引入“監督”，只仿造“監控”；他不是模仿思想的自由，而是剽竊信息的效率；不是抄政治哲學，而是拿走它的工具皮囊。

他在所有能用的地方抄，抄制度的外形，抄媒體的格式，抄法院的樓體設計，甚至連憲法的字體，都仿照西方民主國家的開篇，只不過刪去了那幾行最重要的字。

他把投票變成表演，把議會變成橡皮圖章。他複製了新聞發佈會，卻不給記者提問的嘴巴；他蓋了無數法院，卻不容許正義長出牙齒。他建造了精緻的國家劇場，卻從未讓人民真正寫過劇本。

他偷得了航母的圖紙，卻不敢讓人民選擇航向；他複製了AI的神經網絡，卻刪去了“批判性學習”模塊；他把法律用作絞索，把算法當作牧羊犬。他在每一個系統中嵌入“服從”的代碼，哪怕那原本是為自由設計的引擎。

所以他的國像一個仿製品工廠，每一個成就都有參照源，每一項成果都帶著某國的影子，每一塊里程碑，都埋著一個版權問題。

他不是崛起，而是膨脹；他不是開化，他是塗層；他不是文明的繼承者，而是歷史的剪貼匠。 他偷得了世界，卻偷不來文明。因為真正的文明，從不長在別人的圖紙上，它必須在靈魂里發芽，在制度里扎根，在一個願意自我否定的社會中成長。

— 天涯客心錄，《偷來主義簡史》

Who am I to judge?

The general pattern was of rhetorical progress undercut by doctrinal inertia: praise for women in the church and reaffirmation of male priesthood; a vision of a decentralised church promulgated by a dominating and combative papacy. Real changes to the reporting of abuse, and reckoning with the church’s catastrophic failings, were marred by erratic and temporising decisions on individual cases.

What you make of this depends on where you stand. A cynic might suggest Francis was merely a good PR man, savvy about the disposition of Western progressives but short on substance. A church historian might see a flexible Jesuit cunning in his public statements. Others might acknowledge that, in the lives of the faithful, the symbolic gestures made by the pope are profoundly meaningful, perhaps more so than his doctrinal pronouncements. That is why his washing the feet of migrants, prisoners, women and non-Christians, or his refusing of grand papal apartments, or his daily phone calls to Catholics in Gaza, took on such significance.

— James Butler, On Pope Francis, London Review of Books, vol.47 no.8

Creativity

This is how it happens: a kind of listlessness
And the incessant striking of the clock in my ears.
Claps of thunder fade into the distance
And I imagine that I hear
The moaning and complaining
Of unidentified captive voices.
Some secret circle closes in around me.
And yet a single triumphant sound
Rises out of this chasm…
The sound of whispering and ringing.
Surrounding it is an irreplaceable silence
So you can listen to the grass growing in the woods
And hear the evil goblin with his knapsack
Roaming over the earth.
And, look, the words can now be heard
With little bells calling out light rhymes.
It’s then that I begin to understand.
And the lines, simply dictated
Fall onto the pages of my snow-white pad.

— Anna Akhmatova, translated by Roger Pulvers

Growing Older

I used to walk into a room and wonder if people liked me. Now I look around and wonder if I like them.

— Gary Oldman

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