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- My Name is Red, Orhan Pamuk
Blindness and Memory

"before the art of illumination there was blackness an afterward there will also be blackness. through our colors, paints, art and love, we remember that Allah had commanded us to "See"! to know is to remember what you've seen. to see is to know without remembering. thus, painting is remembering the blackness. the great masters, who shared a love of painting and perceived that color and sight arose from darkness, longed to return to Allah's blackness by means of color. artists without memory neither remembers Allah nor his blackness..."



-In Praise of Shadows, Tanizaki

"whenever I see the alcove of a tastefully built Japanese room, I marvel at our comprehension at the secrets of shadows, our sensitive use of shadows and light. for the beauty of the alcove is not the work of some clever device. an empty space is marked off with plain wood and plan walls, so that light drawn into it forms dim shadows within emptiness. there is nothing more. and yet, when we gaze into the darkness that gathers behind the crossbeam, around the flower vase, beneath the shelves, though we know perfectly well it is mere shadow, we are overcome with a feeling that in this small corner of the atmosphere there reigns complete and utter silence; that here in the darkness immutable tranquility holds away."