Yet my mind — thanks be to the most high eternal gods! — can never rest for more than an albatross’s glide upon the slopes of the past. Today, writing my memories, I feel as if I were playing a sort of practical joke upon myself. I am hot on the trail of the future. I can imagine myself on my deathbed, spent utterly with lust to touch the next world, like a boy asking for his first kiss from a woman.
Aleister Crowley, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, Chapter 54
My publisher told me that when I wasn’t there, Hilal played an imaginary violin, as if she were practicing. I know that chess players do the same, playing entire games in their head, without the need of a board. “Yes, she’s playing silent music for invisible beings. Perhaps they need it.”
Paulo Coelho, Aleph [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]
‘Ha! ha!’—and he laughed with a kind of despairing mockery, while the fragments of the vessel’s sails flapped against the spars with a din as if some mighty demon were struggling with the blast.
George W M Reynolds, Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf [Amazon, Amazon (Dover), Gutenberg, Publisher, Local Library]
They listened, and they believed him. They had always believed him. It scared him, the way they believed, almost as if they were half asleep, or some part of them were missing. Truth be told, he, too, felt as if he were half asleep or half real.
Michael Poore, Up Jumps the Devil [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]
Her beatitude leant forward to her, as if to embrace. The rich presence enveloped her; out of a broken and contrite heart she sighed with joy. On the inhaled breath her splendour glowed again; on the exhaled it passed. She stood alone, at peace. Dawn was in the air; ecce omnia nova facio.
Charles Williams, Descent Into Hell [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher]
I looked to the back of my eyeballs as I tried to drift off in the waking darkness of my insomniac night, and then, it may seem crazy, but I popped out of my body as if on an elastic band.
Parker Gordon, Parallel Lives
