Tồ

“I am always sad, I think. Perhaps this signifies that I am not sad at all, because sadness is something lower than your normal disposition, and I am always the same thing. Perhaps I am the only person in the world, then, who never becomes sad. Perhaps I am lucky.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“Ngày ngày kẹt giữa đám đông, chen chúc trên những con đường đông nghịt người, nhiều khi tôi giật mình, trời ơi, họ kia, đồng loại mình kia, sao mình lại thấy cô đơn đến rã rời…
Lúc ấy, tôi có một cảm giác kì lạ, chỉ mình trên đời nầy, chỉ một mình… Chẳng ai là tri âm, chẳng ai cả…”
― Nguyễn Ngọc Tư, Yêu người ngóng núi

“Có bao giờ bạn ở trong trạng thái này: một giai điệu nào đó gắn liền với một đoạn đời nào đó của bạn. Và nó cứ mãi mãi như thế, dính cứng ngắc như bị dán bằng keo con voi. Bạn nghe giai điệu đó, lập tức đoạn đời đó sẽ trở về bên bạn, nguyên vẹn. Cảnh vật quanh bạn như rùng mình biến đổi. Mùi hương quanh bạn như chuyển mình. Ngay cả chính bạn cũng gần như choáng váng, như xẹt điện, như sụp đổ, như bất cứ một hiệu ứng chuyển cảnh mạnh mẽ nào đó trong phim ảnh mà chúng ta có thể hình dung. Có bao giờ như thế không?”
― Nguyễn Thiên Ngân

“He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others--the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by the midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated