Manav

“Life is such a strange thing, she thinks, once she has stopped laughing. Even after certain things have happened to them, no matter how awful the experience, people still go on eating and drinking, going to the toilet and washing themselves - living, in other words. And sometimes they even laugh out loud. And they probably have these same thoughts, too, and when they do it must make them cheerlessly recall all the sadness they'd briefly managed to forget.”
― Han Kang, The Vegetarian

“It's a bad word, 'belong.' Especially when you put it with somebody you love ... You can't own a human being.”
― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

“I like life well enough to want to live it awake”
― André Gide, The Immoralist

“...Our beauty lies in this extended capacity for convolution.”
― Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49