“The poet is a brother speaking to a brother of "a moment of their other lives" — a moment that had been buried beneath the dust of the busy world.”

Source: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Brighton Rock (1938)

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 3
Context: Old George Orwell got it backward. Big Brother isn't watching. He's singing and dancing. He's pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother’s busy holding your attention every moment you're awake. He's making sure you're always distracted. He's making sure you're fully absorbed. He's making sure your imagination withers. Until it's as useful as your appendix. He's making sure your attention is always filled. And this being fed, it's worse than being watched. With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what's in your mind. With everyone's imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world.

"Terry's Song"
Song lyrics, Magic (2007)

Source: The Fury / Dark Reunion

John Rivers in The Genius and the Goddess (1955)
Context: You can't worship a spirit in spirit, unless you do it now. Wallowing in the past may be good literature. As wisdom, it's hopeless. Time Regained is Paradise Lost, and Time Lost is Paradise Regained. Let the dead bury their dead. If you want to live at every moment as it presents itself, you've got to die to every other moment.

"In Warsaw" (1945), trans. Czesŀaw Miŀosz, Robert Hass and Madeline Levine
Rescue (1945)
Context: How can I live in this country
Where the foot knocks against
The unburied bones of kin?
I hear voices, see smiles. I cannot
Write anything; five hands
Seize my pen and order me to write
The story of their lives and deaths.
Was I born to become
a ritual mourner?
I want to sing of festivities,
The greenwood into which Shakespeare
Often took me. Leave
To poets a moment of happiness,
Otherwise your world will perish.

Book 3, Chapter 4 (p. 669)
The Dragon in the Sword (1986)

Sermon preached at Mill-hill Chapel, Leeds on 28th August 1870.