Aldrin

“People think they live more intensely than animals, than plants, and especially than things. Animals sense that they live more intensely than plants and things. Plants dream that they live more intensely than things. But things last, and this lasting is more alive than anything else.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, Primeval and Other Times

“Knowledge that is grown only on the outside changes nothing inside a man, or merely changes him on the surface, as one garment is changed for another. But he who learns by taking things inside himself undergoes constant transformation, because he incorporates what he learns into his being.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, Primeval and Other Times

“Come back to me. The world is terrible and it can kill you. Look at the earthquakes, the volcanic eruptions, the fires and the floods,” He thundered from the rain clouds.

“Oh, come on, I’ll manage,” man replied, and was gone.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, Primeval and Other Times

“Then for a brief moment he saw everything completely differently. Open space, empty and endless, stretched away in all “directions. Everything within this dead expanse, every living thing was helpless and alone. Things were happening by accident, and when the accident failed, automatic law appeared – the rhythmical machinery of nature, the cogs and pistons of history, conformity with the rules that was rotting from the inside and crumbling to dust. Cold and sorrow reigned everywhere. Every creature was trying to huddle up to something, to cling to something, to things, to each other, but all that resulted was suffering and despair.

The quality of what Izydor saw was temporality. Under a colourful outer coating everything was merging in collapse, decay, and destruction.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, Primeval and Other Times