Connor Stompanato

“But how can a man who has once strayed into Heaven ever hope to make terms with the earth! What passes for happiness with most people seemed contemptible to me. And when I tried, deliberately and sincerely, to live like the rest of them, I stored up enough remorse to last me a very long time.”
― Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes

“This is reality, this is pure fact - this forest, this moss, your hand, the ladybird on my leg, this cannot be taken away, can it? (it will, it was). This has all come together here, no matter how the paths twisted, and fooled each other, and got fouled up, they inevitably met here!”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle

“I allowed the union between the earth and my body, I let go, and for the first time in my life I appreciated everything for what it was, observed the miracle of it. The earth for being the earth, my hands for being my hands, the plants for growing out of seeds, and the others around me, everyone, with their own rights and dreams and interior worlds.”
― Tomasz Jedrowski, Swimming in the Dark

“Maybe we all were born with trust and then lost it. Maybe we all had to find it again before we left.”
― Kassandra Montag, After the Flood