greedy... for books & drama

A collection of meaningful and beautiful quotes that I've come about~

[elnerdyside]

"'Grief is a swallow,' he said. 'One day you wake up and you think it's gone, but it's only migrated to some other place, warming its feathers. Sooner or later, it will return and perch in your heart again.'" - pg 197 ln 34

[elnerdyside]

"Researchers at various world-renowned institutions had observed persistent brain activity in people who had just died; in some cases this had lasted for only a few minutes. In others, for as much as ten minutes and thirty-eight seconds. What happened during that time? Did the dead remember the past, and, if so, which parts of it, and in what order? How could a mind condense an entire life into the time it took to boil a kettle?" - pg 190 ln 26

[elnerdyside]

"If there was a God up there, He must be laughing His head off at a human race capable of making atomic bombs and building artificial intelligence, but still uncomfortable with their own mortality and unable to sort out what to do with their dead. How pathetic it was to try to relegate death to the periphery of life when death was at the centre of everything." - pg 190 ln 9

[elnerdyside]

"Life is a game between you and the learners that surround you. You can refuse to play, but then you'll have to live a twentieth-century life in the twenty-first. Or you can play to win. What model do you want the computer to have? And what data can you give it that will produce that model? Those two questions should always be in the back of your mind whenever you interact with a learning algorithm - as they are when you interact with other people." - pg 264 ln 16

[elnerdyside]

"In farming, we plant the seeds, make sure they have enough water and nutrients, and reap the grown crops. Why can't technology be more like this? It can, and that's the promise of machine learning. Learning algorithms are the seeds, data is the soil, and the learned programs are the grown plants. The machine-learning expert is like a farmer, sowing the seeds, irrigating and fertilizing the soil, and keeping an eye on the health of the crop but otherwise staying out of the way." - pg 7 ln 7

[elnerdyside]

"Death can be a friend. Enough is enough. There has been so much time to prepare and to say goodbye. But when at last they go, we want them back: just a few days longer; just for those words we never spoke; a last farewell. To hold their hand and keep them with us a short while more. Don't go. Please don't go." - pg 219 ln 5

[elnerdyside]

"A beloved friend described the death of his wife at too early an age. She was at home, in their bedroom, and by the end was clearly suffering, but hanging on. My friend summoned their two children, not yet teenagers, and told them that their mother needed their permission to leave. And they said in turn: 'You can go now, Mum.' And quietly, on the words, she went. She left, and she left them with the gift of herself that they carry still and will always.

Another friend, dying in his forties, tried to get out of his hospital window, as if he could escape death that way.

Sean and I went to see our friend Nick just an hour or so before he died. He knew he was nearly there. The morphine was making him woozy - he thought that the floppy quince blossoms that his wife had put at the end of his bed were ballerinas dancing for him in their pink tutus. He had no religious faith, but he was good-humoured as he lay dying, propped up on the pillow. 'Nearly too late,' he quipped when we came in. We read poems to him (I remember Sean chose Tennyson's 'Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal' and I 'The Sunlight on the Garden' by Louis MacNeice), and then our time was up. 'We've got to go,' I said, and he smiled. 'No, no, it's me who's got to go.' Years later, I'm still astonished by his wit and grace in the face of his own extinction. Every May, at quince-blossom time, I remember his gallant way of leaving." - pg 215 ln 11

[elnerdyside]

"In many hospitals, places of healing and rescue, there is an inevitable social isolation that is dangerous for a person whose grip upon the world is already fragile. Put someone with dementia in hospital for a few weeks, wake them at six in the morning with food they don't like, call them by a name they don't recognise (or 'dear' or 'love' or 'we') or don't speak much to them at all, rattle past them with trolleys, push pills into their mouth, rush them in a wheelchair down an endless windowless corridor, wrap tourniquets round their arms, put needles into their skin, stand at the bottom of their bed with several other strangers in white coats or green scrubs and stare at them and write things down with a frown, take away everything that is familiar to them, pull the props of routine from under them, put them in a nappy just in case, deprive them of people who care for them and understand their needs and speak their language - and they will suffer. Suffer and deteriorate and fall away from their old self and very often never recover." - pg 179 ln 6

[elnerdyside]

"What a difference a letter makes. 'Home' is a small word meaning the centre of one's world, the place from which one sets out that is 'at the heart of the real'. 'A home' in many cases doesn't mean safety at all but removal and unbelonging. Home is domestic and personal; a home, however welcoming and homely, is professional and institutional. Home is where you are in control of your life; a home is where your life is partially or wholly arranged for you, and maybe not in the way that you desire. Home is where you live, and a home is usually the place you go before you die. For some it is the last refuge; for others a waiting room where you don't want to be but don't want to leave. One by one, you're summoned." - pg 157 ln 28

[elnerdyside]

"An old man with severely advanced dementia sits slumped in a wheelchair. He drools; his eyes are half closed and it's impossible to know if he is asleep or awake. A few times a day, soft food is pushed into his mouth. We see photos of him when he was young; strong and handsome. He loved Louis Armstrong: his daughter remembers he would dance her to school, swinging around lamp posts and singing. Someone puts earphones on the man's head and suddenly the music from his glory days is pouring into him. His old head lifts. His foggy eyes open and knowledge comes into them. His toothless mouth splits into a beatific grin. And now he is dancing in his chair, swaying. And then this man - who doesn't speak any longer - is actually singing. The music has reached him, found him, gladdened him and brought him back into life." - pg 152 ln 2

[elnerdyside]

"Maria Owens did what she did for a reason. She was young and she thought damning anyone who loved us would protect us. But what she had with that terrible man wasn't love. She didn't understand that when you truly love someone and they love you in return, you ruin your lives together. That is not a curse, it's what life is, my girl. We all come to ruin, we turn to dust, but whom we love is the thing that lasts." - Isabelle on pg 254 ln 11

[elnerdyside]

"'Life without memory is no life at all.' Without memory, things don't fit together; the narrative of one's life crumbles, the walls of one's self tumble down. Without memory, you are adrift in a helpless present tense, and 'the world glides through you without leaving a trace'. How can we love without memory, have relationships, empathize or plan or imagine or anticipate, keep track of oneself, stand on firm ground? Memory as thought before thought and knowledge before knowledge; memory as a way of editing our own life; memory as a way of joining all our different selves together into a coherent whole; not a tool for thinking but an act of thinking; memory as a lie, a creation, a different kind of truth. Collective. Deeply personal. At war with death.

The terror of losing memories is the terror of losing the active self: that which holds us precariously together into the shape we have built up over our lives. To have and to make memories enables us to be the (often inccurate, self-deceiving or misinformed) narrator of our own lives. Memories connect us to our past and launch us into our future; they link us to other people and bridge the labyrinths of the inner self to the abundance of the outer world. But memory's vast cloisters can crumble and fall into darkness; are the memories still in there, like restless ghosts, or have they been obliterated? Where, as Sally Magnusson asks in the title of her groundbreaking book about her mother's dementia, do memories go? And what are memories anyway?" - pg 64 ln 24

[elnerdyside]

"To be human is to be dependent; this isn't a weakness but a necessary condition of being alive. We are born helpless and we die helpless, and in between is the continual flux of giving and receiving, of being at each other's mercy, of helping others and being helped in our turn. 'The body ages. The body is preparing to die. No theory of time offers a reprieve here. Death and time were always in alliance.'" - pg 40 ln 23

[elnerdyside]

"How awful it was, thought Tessa, remembering Fats the toddler, the way tiny ghosts of your living children haunted your heart; they could never know, and would hate it if they did, how their growing was a constant bereavement." - pg 157 ln 27

[elnerdyside]

"내 삶은 때론 휑했고 행복했습니다. 삶이 한낱 꿈에 불과하지만 그래도 살아서 좋았습니다. 새벽에 쨍한 차가운 공기, 꽃이 피기 전 부는 달큰한 바람, 해 질 무렵 우러나오는 노을의 냄새, 어느 한가지 눈부시지 않은 날이 없었습니다. 지금 삶이 힘든 당신, 이 세상에 태어난 이상 당신은 기 모든 걸 매일 누릴 자격이 있습니다. 후회만 가득한 과거와 불안하기만 한 미래 때문에 지금을 망치지 마세요. 오늘을 살아가세요. 눈이 부시게. 당신은 그럴 자격이 있습니다. 누군가의 엄마였고, 누이였고, 딸이었고, 그리고 나였을 그대들에게" - 김혜자, 눈이 부시게

Such a beautiful speech that I just want to share in its original language.

[elnerdyside]

"My life was blighted by misfortunes at times, but there were also happy moments. They say that life is nothing but a mere dream, but I was still grateful for my life. The cold, brisk air at dawn, the sweet breeze before flowers start to bloom, and the scent of sunset that fills the air at sundown. Every single day was dazzlingly beautiful. Even if you're struggling right now, everyone alive has the right to enjoy this every day. Even if one ordinary day is followed by another ordinary day, life is still worth living. Don't waste the present regretting the past and worrying about the future. Live this day beautifully. You deserve it. To all of you who were a mom, a sister, a daughter, and yourself." - Kim Hye-ja, The Light in Your Eyes (ep 12)

[elnerdyside]

"In my opinion, auroras are an error. I read this somewhere. Auroras are originally magnetic fields outside the Earth. But they accidentally flowed into the North Pole. That means auroras were not intended to exist. They're just an error that happened by chance.

But the thing is, they're so beautiful. The error is so beautiful. Even though it's just an error... An error can be beautiful too. So beautiful that it makes you cry. I think the moment I see auroras, I'll burst into tears. Auroras. I think they'll be so lovely." - Kim Hye-ja, The Light in Your Eyes (ep 7)