Dharmendra

“That’s what it’s like to lose a woman. And at a certain time, losing one woman means losing all women. That’s how we become Men Without Women. We lose Percy faith, Francis Lai, and 101 Strings. And ammonites and coelacanths. And we lose her beautiful back. But all of that has vanished. All that remains is an old broken piece of eraser, and the far-off sound of the sailor’s dirge. And the unicorn beside the fountain, his lonely horn aimed at the sky.

I hope that M is in heaven now – or somewhere like it. And it would be nice if her thoughts occasionally turn to me. But maybe that’s asking too much. I pray that, even if I’m not part of it, M is happy and at peace, with music playing on into eternity.

As one of the Men Without Women, I pray for this with all my heart. At this point prayer seems like the only thing I can do. Probably.”
― Haruki Murakami, Men Without Women

“It is ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish which lies in the way to knowledge.”
― John Locke

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.”
― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

“I am not capable of avoiding being the fool of randomness; what I can do is confine it to where it brings some aesthetic gratification.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets