Commonplace Book

'Because thoughts are something special. Often they are nothing more than accidents that pass away without leaving a trace, and thoughts, too, have their times to live and to die. We can have a flash of insight, and then, slowly, it fades beneath our touch like a flower. The form remains, but the colours, the scent are missing. We remember them word for word, and the logic of the sentence is completely unimpaired, and yet it drifts ceaselessly around on the surface of our minds and we feel none the richer for it. Until - perhaps several years later - all of a sudden another moment comes when we see that in the meantime we have known nothing of it, although logically we knew everything.'

from The Confusions of Young Torless by Robert Musil