JJ Cross

“The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image.”
― Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.”
― James Baldwin

“Every book in the world is out there waiting to be read by me.”
― Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives

“For all too many of these high-born revolutionaries, the main attraction of 'the cause' lay not so much in the satisfaction which they might derive from seeing the people's daily lives improved, as in their own romantic search for sense of 'wholeness' which might give higher meaning to their lives and to end alienation from the world.”
― Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891 - 1924