Interrospire

“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

“I’m sorry I left you in silence all this time,” Takeru said. “I don’t know if I understand it… but I am glad we fought today.” Misaki nodded. “Me too.”
― M.L. Wang, The Sword of Kaigen

“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

“the forms of things, including that of the little scallop-shell of pastry, so richly sensual under its severe, religious folds, were either obliterated or had been so long dormant as to have lost the power of expansion which would have allowed them to resume their place in my consciousness.”
― Marcel Proust, Swann's Way