Ranee Tester

“And now I was lonelier, I supposed, than anyone else in the world. Even Defoe's creation, Robinson Crusoe, the prototype of the ideal solitary, could hope to meet another human being. Crusoe cheered himself by thinking that such a thing could happen any day, and it kept him going. But if any of the people now around me came near I would need to run for it and hide in mortal terror. I had to be alone, entirely alone, if I wanted to live.”
― Władysław Szpilman, The Pianist: The Extraordinary Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939–45

“what is the work of one man, in a rude state of society, being generally that of several in an improved one.”
― Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

“A person's life purpose is nothing more than to rediscover, through the detours of art or love or passionate work, those one or two images in the presence of which his heart first opened.”
― Albert Camus

“Sleep,” he says. “I'll fight the bad dreams off if they come to get you.” “With what?” “My bare hands, obviously.”
― Veronica Roth, Insurgent