Numbers Brodess

“The girl was holding out her hand, bit I could only give a pathetic shrug.
I had nothing to give her. I'd finally faded away.”
― Scott Heim

“No matter what time of day or amount of work to be done, someone with Tahiti could close his eyes and the reality of moody lawnmowers, scruffy lawns, threats of termination of employment would recede and in seconds he’d simply be in Tahiti, stark naked and drinking from a coconut, aware only of the percussion of the wind and girlish sighs of the ocean. (Few”
― Marisha Pessl, Special Topics in Calamity Physics

“When you have too much faith in something, it's bound to hurt you. Too much faith in anything will suck you dry. In this way, all the world is a vampire.”
― Poppy Z. Brite

“Yet if there's no reason to live without a child, how could there be with one? To answer one life with a successive life is simply to transfer the onus of purpose to the next generation; the displacements amounts to a cowardly and potentially infinite delay. Your children's answer, presumably, will be to procreate as well, and in doing so to distract themselves, to foist their own aimlessness onto their offspring.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin