Emma

“Everyone’s alone—or so it seems to me.
They make noises, and think they are talking to each other;
They make faces, and think they understand each other,
And I’m sure they don’t. Is that delusion?
Can we only love
Something created in our own imaginations?”
― T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party

“I guess I have a lot of emotion stored up. But it's nothing bad. It's love. It's just love rotting up inside of me . . . That's it . . . I have too much love, I think, and nobody to give it to.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, Homesick for Another World

“I used to analyze myself down to the last thread, used to compare myself with others, recalled all the smallest glances, smiles and words of those to whom I’d tried to be frank, interpreted everything in a bad light, laughed viciously at my attempts ‘to be like the rest’ –and suddenly, in the midst of my laughing, I’d give way to sadness, fall into ludicrous despondency and once again start the whole process all over again – in short, I went round and round like a squirrel on a wheel.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment