a quote to note

Green on green

A lovely description and an idyllic image of an English county.

‘Herefordshire is green on green, lichen on old apple...

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a quote to note, you got mail

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Found in a letter by a distant and anonymous imperial Chinese official in response to the trials and complaints of the...

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metaphors

Thinking

Apt use of the kiln as a metaphor to describe the thought process of the man who first created porcelain in...

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metaphors

Images

May you be ever spared barked slogans. ‘Images pass, as brief as barked slogans.’

Source: Edmund de Waal, The White Road (London: Chatto...

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put in a good word

Breathturn (Atemwende)

A word coined by the poet Paul Celan.   Edmund de Waal mentions that ‘Celan cannot find words to fit together...

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metaphors

Negligible

Try it, say ‘negligible’ slowly and see what a crumbly, negligible word it is.

‘His assets are negligible, a word...

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metaphors

Glaze

What a magnificent description of the cracked coastline of a broken plate!

‘… breaks the plate into shards. The glaze...

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metaphors

Surfaces

You can see this magnificent creature's breathing sheen.

‘His surfaces oscillate like the breathing flank of some thoroughbred animal.’

Source:...

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metaphors

Whiteness

A vision of whiteness brought into relief through contrast with non-whiteness, rendering everything else mere shadow.

‘It is becoming his obsession,...

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put in a good word

Growan

A southern English local word for granite, also called ‘moorstone’.

Source: Edmund de Waal, The White Road, p. 251

...

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put in a good word

Scrimshank

A playful, crunchy sounding word. Edmund de Waal uses this to suggest all over the place, at random: ‘bricks are...

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a quote to note

A pilgrim’s path

Luiz and I have talked about taking some long walks or bike rides and even doing a stretch of the...

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