Statements about consciousness and existence

Sometimes I think, sometimes I am by Sara Fanelli.

The book is introduced by writer and mythographer Marina Warner, who points out that its title ‘Sometimes I think, Sometimes I am’ has been borrowed by Sara from Paul Valery, who was himself echoing a famous statement about consciousness and existence. This signposts, she adds, its resemblance to a so-called ‘commonplace book’, in which children and adults used to keep quotations and mementoes. Originally, when someone like the scholar Erasmus was urging people to keep such records of their thoughts, the objective was improvement (cultivating a sense of self in relation to God). Gradually these transformed into idiosyncratic personal hoards of private moments of delight, something akin to Fanelli’s book.

Fanelli has selected quotations from a number of thinkers through the ages and set them within five themes; ‘Devils and Angels’, ‘Love’, ‘Colour’, ‘Mythology’ and ‘The Absurd’.