Eden

“why do you condemn a man whom you have never met, whom no one knows and about whom even you yourself know nothing?”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“None will ever be a true Parisian who has not learned to wear a mask of gaiety over his sorrows and one of sadness, boredom, or indifference over his inward joy.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”
― Franz Kafka

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”
― Andre Gide, Autumn Leaves