Diya

“Go into hard things quickly, eagerly, then retreat.”
― Miriam Toews, All My Puny Sorrows

“And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
― T.S. Eliot

“If the one I waited for
came now, what should I do?
This morning's garden filled with snow
is far too lovely
for footsteps to mar.”
― Izumi Shikibu , The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan

“We imagined we knew everything the other thought, even when we did not necessarily want to know it, but in fact, I have come to see,we knew not the smallest fraction of what there was to know.”
― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking