Tim

“I had no interest in existing as a martyr, forever defined by the worst things that had happened to me. I needed to believe that when your life has become a cage, you can loosen the bars and reclaim your freedom.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“(An artist's) role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are.”
― James Baldwin

“Man’s finest workmanship, the closer you observe it, the more imperfections it shows; as in a piece of polished steel a microscope will discover a rough surface. Whereas, what may look coarse and rough in Nature’s workmanship will show an infinitely minute perfection, the closer you look into it. The reason of the minute superiority of Nature’s work over man’s is, that the former works from the innermost germ, while the latter works merely superficially.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne

“...novels do not begin the way you want them to, but the way they want to.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Living to Tell the Tale