nora

“The same feeling of not belonging, of futility, wherever I go: I pretend interest in what matters nothing to me, I bestir myself mechanically or out of charity, without ever being caught up, without ever being somewhere. What attracts me is elsewhere, and I don’t know what that elsewhere is.”
― Emil Cioran

“He was flinging himself onto his knees to pray, but broke into laughter– not at the idea of prayer, but at himself.
He began, hurriedly dressing, ‘If I’m lost, I am lost, I don’t care! Shall I put the sock on?’ he suddenly wondered, ‘it will get dustier still and the traces will be gone.’
But no sooner had he put it on than he pulled it off again in loathing and horror. He pulled it off, but reflecting that he had no other socks, he picked it up and put it on again– and again he laughed.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“If the morning had been cold and gray he could have grasped the reins of the past in an instant, but it was one of those days that New York gets sometimes in May, when the air on Fifth Avenue is a soft, light wine.”
― Francis Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

“And he could not tell why the struggle was worthwhile, why he had determined to use the utmost himself and his heritage from the personalities he had passed...

He stretched out his arms to the crystalline, radiant sky.

I know myself," he cried, "But that is all.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise