Interrospire

“No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory—this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal.”
― Marcel Proust, Swann's Way

“She had thought she was water that could adjust to fill any container, be as strong in the shape of a mother as a warrior, but in the end, maybe Koli had been right about her. She was a knife, a sharp edge, that killed or cut anything it touched. The babies she hadn’t killed in her womb had been born into a world of blades that cut them down before they had a chance to grow. Now the evil in her had risen out of her sleep and turned its wrath on her husband.”
― M.L. Wang, The Sword of Kaigen

“What an abyss of uncertainty whenever the mind feels that some part of it has strayed beyond its own borders; when it, the seeker, is at once the dark region through which it must go seeking, where all its equipment will avail it nothing. Seek? More than that: create. It is face to face with something which does not so far exist, to which it alone can give reality and substance, which it alone can bring into the light of day.”
― Marcel Proust, Swann's Way

“Snow whirled faster around them as Misaki crashed into the Whispering Blade a fourth time—shattering it.”
― M.L. Wang, The Sword of Kaigen