Sofie

“They died crying in their minds like little babies. They forgot the thing they were fighting for the thing they were dying for. They thought about things a man can understand. They died yearning for the face of a friend. They died whimpering for the voice of a mother a father a wife a child. They died with their hearts sick for one more look at the place where they were born please god just one more look. They died moaning and sighing for life. They knew what was important. They knew that life was everything and they died with screams and sobs. They died with only one thought in their minds and that was I want to live I want to live I want to live.”
― Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun

“The reason life is so strange is that so often people have no choice,”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“He was forty-two years old, and he could see nothing before him that he wished to enjoy and little behind him that he cared to remember.”
― John Williams, Stoner

“Here in the forest lay sullen, soot-blackened stones that were the remains of ruined hearths; in abandoned cemeteries were dark headstones that had already half sunk into the ground. Everything inanimate—stones, iron—was being swallowed by the earth, dissolving into it with the years, while green, vegetable life, in contrast, was bursting up from the earth. The boy found the silence over the cold hearths especially painful. And when he came back home, the smell of smoke from the kitchen, the barking of dogs, and the cackling of hens somehow seemed all the sweeter.”
― Vasily Grossman, Everything Flows