Brandon Cunningham

“if, of three friends (A, B, and C), A should die, then B loses not only A but “A’s part in C,” while C loses not only A but “A’s part in B.” In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald’s reaction to a specifically Caroline joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him “to myself” now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald. Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“You had every intention of being depressed forever, but as it turns out, there's work to be done, meals to eat, movies to see, errands to run. You meant to be in ruins permanently, your misery a monument, a gash across the cold hard earth, but honestly, who has the time for that? Instead, you survived - apparently, you both did - and things are shockingly okay.”
― Raphael Bob-Waksberg, Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory: Stories

“I thought how small and mortal and defenseless was man, how short-lived his youth, how uncertain his joy … how he is hurried through a narrow space called time, unable to turn or to retrace his steps — unable to look ahead or behind, seeing nothing, except what is under his nose — uncertain even if what he sees is what it seems to be. For the great pattern of the suns is repeated over and over again, in a blade of grass or in a drop of water; to the spider or the ant, man is as incomprehensible as God. How meager and meaningless the life of a beetle seems to us; how pitiful our own may seem to some undreamed-of power.”
― Robert Nathan, Long After Summer

“One day, however, it hit me that I was pushing thirty. What I thought of as my youth was coming to a close. I remember how weird that feeling was. “So this is how it is,” I thought. “Time just slips away.”
― Haruki Murakami, Novelist as a Vocation