Joy

“Am I going to die?' he asked one of the candles. It did not immediately answer. Its flame flickered, as if unsettled by this question. 'Only very small or very large things are immortal,' it said cautiously. 'Atoms are immortal and galaxies are immortal. That's the whole mystery. The range of death is very specific, like a radio wave.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, The Empusium

“The light that fell in here was mottled by the stained-glass windows of the treetops, where every leaf was like a piece of crystal playing with the light according to its own rules. Wojnicz walked along a central nave toward an altar in the distance, not yet visible, but everything foretold it—this was a church full of labyrinths, side naves, crypts beneath the stones, tabernacles hidden in holes in the trees, altars materializing on the mossy trunks of toppled beeches. This church was not at all definite, like a man-made church, but a place of constant change: of water into life, and of light into matter. Everything here was rustling, swelling, gathering, growing and multiplying, budding and trilling. The green moss and gray lichen made the forest seem carpeted in Persian rugs—in velveteen, sheepskin, woolly felt and soft flannel. Why on earth hadn’t he come here sooner?”
― Olga Tokarczuk, The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story

“He preferred to belong to this world, which did not yet know him and in whose eyes he still had time to define himself. He would rather take the risk that one day this world too would disappoint him, and he would have to run away again, escape to yet another, more distant location to avoid falling into the arms of that familiar, hopeless state in which one was simply a bother to oneself and others.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, The Empusium

“At that moment, when I had the TV sound off, I was in a 382 mood; I had just dialed it. So although I heard the emptiness intellectually, I didn't feel it. My first reaction consisted of being grateful that we could afford a Penfield mood organ. But then I realized how unhealthy it was, sensing the absence of life, not just in this building but everywhere, and not reacting—do you see? I guess you don't. But that used to be considered a sign of mental illness; they called it 'absence of appropriate affect.' So I left the TV sound off and I sat down at my mood organ and I experimented. And I finally found a setting for despair. So I put it on my schedule for twice a month; I think that's a reasonable amount of time to feel hopeless about everything, about staying here on Earth after everybody who's smart has emigrated, don't you think?”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?