Those two or three seconds of silence! Two or three seconds when nothing happened, a moment of suspension. The beauty of that silence! That lull. That pause, when nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. “Zurückbleiben” emanating from a different throat at every station, here a woman’s, there a man’s, with slight variations in stress, sometimes placed on zurück, sometimes on bleiben: the word was magical, narcotic. After Zurückbleiben everything came to a halt, stopped short, the history of the world paused momentarily.

~ Adam Zagajewski, Slight Exaggeration: An Essay

Source: Your Eyes Blaze Out