Whenever I sit with a bowl of soup before me, listening to the murmur that penetrates like the distant song of an insect, lost in contemplation of the flavours to come, I feel as if I were being drawn into a trance.

There are those who say that when civilization progresses a bit further transportation facilities will move into the skies and under the ground, and that our streets will again be quiet, but I know perfectly well that when that day comes some new device for torturing the old will be invented.

The older we get the more we seem to think that everything was better in the past.

For a woman who lived in the dark it was enough if she had a faint, white face -a full body was unnecessary.

Yet for better or worse we love things that bear the marks of grime, soot, and weather, and we love the colors and the sheen that call to mind the past that made them.

Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty.

And isn't it better really to leave things only hinted at?