Leon Hyacinthus

“In the years afterward, I fled whenever somebody began to understand me. That has subsided. But one thing remained: I don't want anybody to understand me completely. I want to go through life unknown. The blindness of others is my safety and my freedom.”
― Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon

“A feeling is no longer the same when it comes the second time. It dies through the awareness of its return. We become tired and weary of our feelings when they come too often and last too long.”
― Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon

“SOLIDAO, LONELINESS.
What is it that we call loneliness. It can't simply be the absence of others, you can be alone and not lonely, and you can be among people and yet be lonely. So what is it? ... it isn't only that others are there, that they fill up the space next to us. But even when they celebrate us or give advice in a friendly conversation, clever, sensitive advice: even then we can be lonely. So loneliness is not something simply connected with the presence of others or with what they do. Then what? What on earth?”
― Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon

“I will learn fifteen types of wind and know the weight of tomorrow's rain by the rustle in the sycamores.”
― Claire Keegan, Antarctica