Raluca

“There's so much humanity in a love of trees, so much nostalgia for our first sense of wonder, so much power in just feeling our own insignificance when we are surrounded by nature…yes, that's it: just thinking about trees and their indifferent majesty and our love for them teaches us how ridiculous we are - vile parasites squirming on the surface of the earth - and at the same time how deserving of life we can be, when we can honor this beauty that owes us nothing.”
― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

“I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization.”
― Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

“Ending a novel is almost like putting a child to sleep—it can't be done abruptly.”
― Colm Tóibín

“The hours are numerous and the clock seldom measures the time that passes inside us, the real lifetime, and because of this many days can fit into a few hours, and vice versa, and numbers of years can be an imprecise measure of a man's lifetime, he who dies at forty has perhaps actually lived much longer than he who dies at ninety.”
― Jón Kalman Stefánsson, Himnaríki og helvíti