We read to know we're not alone

Lost in the solitude of his immense power, he began to lose direction.

Wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.

'Tell him,' the colonel said, smiling, 'that a person doesn’t die when he should but when he can'.

There is always something left to love.

People always think that if they can prove they're right, you'll change your mind.

I wish the whole day were like breakfast, when people are still connected to their dreams, focused inward, and not yet ready to engage with the world around them. I realized this is how I am all day; for me, unlike other people, there doesn't come a moment after a cup of coffee or a shower or whatever when I suddenly feel alive and awake and connected to the world. If it were always breakfast, I would be fine.

I have not the pleasure of understanding you.

There’s a kind of white moth, I don’t know  what kind, that glimmers  by mid-May  in the forest, just  as the pink mocassin flowers  are rising.  If you notice anything,  it leads you to notice  more  and more.  And anyway  I was so full of energy.  I was always running around, looking  at this and that.  If I stopped  the pain  was unbearable.  If I stopped and thought, maybe  the world  can’t be saved,  the pain  was unbearable.  Finally, I noticed enough.  All around me in the forest  the white moths floated.  How long do they live, fluttering  in and out of the shadows?  You aren’t much, I said  one day to my reflection  in a green pond,  and grinned.  The wings of the moths catch the sunlight  and burn  so brightly.  At night, sometimes,  they slip between the pink lobes  of the moccasin flowers and lie there until dawn,  motionless  in those dark halls of honey.

It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. ... The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully

You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.

All cruelty springs from weakness.

That's what art is: escaping everyday normality, which wants to eat you alive.

If you meet an angel, you will have not peace, but a fever.

The world’s full of details, have you noticed? And since no detail is ever repeated in exactly the same shape and always sets off other details, there’s no end to it.

We always fear losing our memory, yet it’s the source of our troubles. Happy people forget.

You, too, are cut out for failure; not that you’d fight the world. You’d let it chew you up and spit you out, and you’d lie there wondering what was wrong. Because you’d always expect the world to be something it wasn’t, something it had no wish to be. The weevil in the cotton, the worm in the beanstalk, the borer in the corn. You couldn't face them, and you couldn't fight them; because you’re too weak, and you’re too strong. And you have no place to go in the world.