Jaqueline Roller

“It is illness that makes us recognize that we do not live in isolation but are chained to a being from a different realm, worlds apart from us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body. Were we to meet a brigand on the road, we might manage to make him conscious of his own personal interest if not our plight. But to ask pity of our body is like talking to an octopus, for which our words can have no more meaning than the sound of the sea, and with which we should be terrified to find ourselves condemned to live.”
― Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way

“You sound like you’re enjoying my suffering.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Death Leaves a Shadow

“The first thing the attendees saw when they walked in was a poster with the question “What are our mokitas?”—a Papua New Guinea word for that which everyone knows and no one will speak of: the elephant in the room.”
― Susan Scott, Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time

“But I could never have done it," he objected, "without everyone else's help."
"That may be true," said Reason gravely, "but you had the courage to try; and what you can do is often simply a matter of what you will do.”
― Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth