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“Where do we find happiness? ‘We pursue it, search for it, kill ourselves trying to find it, and all the time it’s just here,’ she said to herself. ‘It comes just when we’ve stopped expecting anything, stopped hoping, stopped being afraid.’”

— Irène Némirovsky, Dimanche and Other Stories

when you are away and this longing comes over me, i let my thoughts run all over you till you come back. it doesn't matter, not so much, only a little of the quiet hysteria of your absence remains an awkward tickle in the heart. i laugh but then i laugh out of nothing, out of spite as you seem to have recalled all the extensions and exultations of your love, now, quickly folded up while i, finding you retreating, find it all points to me: that what i have loved in you retreats now in me, you harbour no more love or grief — Arthur Yap, departure

“But what are years, what are months! Why count the days, when even one day is enough for a man to know all happiness.” — Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“History is not indelible. History hardly exists. History is a pool of questions that begin with "Whatever happened to?" History is not — on its own — staunch. History is not the number of suitcases you moved with, the plants you carried with you, the people you left behind. History is an obligation that ages you. It trips you up. It skulks and grovels, particularly for those trying hard to move on. History is the daughter repeating to her friends that you moved with two suitcases full of LPs, or that you fell in love and knocked on his door and announced you were moving in — with your plants, of course. With not much else.” — Durga Chew-Bose, Too Much and Not the Mood

“For the first time, I understood what freedom is, and cruelty and violence. I saw freedom behind bars, cruelty as senseless as poetry, violence as common as dampness. I saw a man who had been completely reduced to an animal state. I saw what he could be gladdened by. And it seemed to me that my eyes opened. The world in which I found myself was horrifying. In that world, people fought with sharpened rasp files, ate dogs, covered their faces with tattoos and sodomized goats. In that world, people killed for a package of tea. In that world, I saw men with a gruesome past, a repulsive present and a tragic future. I was friends with a man who had once upon a time pickled his wife and children in a barrel. The world was horrible. But life continued. What is more, life's usual proportions stayed the same. The ratio of good and evil, grief and happiness, remained unchanged.” — Sergei Dovlatov, The Zone

“Well, one thing is clear: in order to establish the true value of a function, one must take it to its limits. And it is clear that yesterday's ridiculous "dissolution into the universe" taken to its limits, is death. Because death is exactly that: the ultimate dissolution of my self into the universe. And hence, if ‘L’ signifies love and ‘D’ signifies death, then L = f(D)—that is, love is a function of death...” — Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“We now know that the Cosmos is far older than they ever imagined. We have examined the universe in space and seen that we live on a mote of dust circling a humdrum star in the remotest corner of an obscure galaxy. And if we are a speck in the immensity of space, we also occupy an instant in the expanse of ages.” — Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“Wonderment is the first passion of all… Those without any natural inclination to this passion are ordinarily very ignorant.” — René Descartes

“We will all profit from a more diverse, inclusive society, understanding, accommodating, even celebrating our difference, while pulling together for the common good.” — Ruth Bader Ginsburg, My Own Words

“If you work by reason, you grow rough-edged; if you choose to dip your oar into sentiment's stream, it will sweep you away. Demanding your own way only serves to constrain you. However you look at it, the human world is not an easy place to live. And when its difficulties intensify, you find yourself longing to leave that world and dwell in some easier one—and then, when you understand at last that difficulties will dog you wherever you may live, this is when poetry and art are born.” — Natsume Soseki, Kusamakura

“There is talk in the village that there is more in these sewers than sewerage. Yes, I say, Yes. But not only these sewers. There is more in your heart than can be spoken. More in your eyes than you will tell. More in the mind of you than anyone can know. More in the night than darkness. More in the river than can be dredged. What more? The hate, envy, malice, greed, stupidity and evil that lie under the floor of everything. If I have secrets so do you.” — Jeanette Winterson, The World and Other Places

“What is given by nature is not necessarily good, what is achieved by artifice is not necessarily worthless.” — John Armstrong, Conditions of Love: The Philosophy of Intimacy

“It is dreadful to think that behind me my own past is no longer anything but shifting darkness.” — Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.” — Hafiz of Shiraz

“Then — then through the door of damnation, I ate life and was eaten by life. I was understanding that my kingdom is of this world. And I understood that through the hell inside me. Because inside myself I saw what the hell is like.” — Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G. H.

“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.” — Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.“ — Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

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