hey, thanks so much for the ask! i don’t read for pleasure very much, and even when i do i mostly read non-fiction. so here’s a quote from a book i recently picked up called the reason i jump by higashida naoki. it’s a series of essays he wrote when he was 13, answering questions he commonly heard/hears as someone with severe autism. 

“The other day I was visiting a town called Kamakura, where there’s this huge statue of Buddha. And when I saw it, I was so deeply moved that I started welling up. It wasn’t just Buddha’s majesty and dignity, it was the sheer weight of history and generations of people’s hopes, prayers and thoughts that broke over me, and I couldn’t stop myself crying. It was as if Buddha himself was saying to me, “All human beings have their hardships to bear, so never swerve away from the path you’re on.” … Everybody has a heart that can be touched by something.” - higashida naoki, the reason i jump