Madeline

“Reading a book is a lot like climbing a mountain.” “What do you mean?” His curiosity piqued, Rintaro had finally looked up from his book. His grandfather wafted his teacup slowly under his nose as if savoring the aroma of the tea. “Reading isn’t only for pleasure or entertainment. Sometimes you need to examine the same lines deeply, read the same sentences over again. Sometimes you sit there, head in hands, only progressing at a painstakingly slow pace. And the result of all this hard work and careful study is that suddenly you’re there and your field of vision expands. It’s like finding a great view at the end of a long climbing trail.”
― Sōsuke Natsukawa, The Cat Who Saved Books

“Of course, winning is much better than losing. No argument there. But winning or losing doesn’t affect the weight and value of the time. It’s the same time, either way. A minute is a minute, an hour is an hour. We need to cherish it. We need to deftly reconcile ourselves with time, and leave behind as many precious memories as we can—that’s what’s the most valuable.”
― Haruki Murakami, First Person Singular: Stories

“You have to let a bit of yourself bleed into your work.” And therein lay the problem: you couldn’t bleed without feeling the sting of the cut.”
― Jodi Picoult, By Any Other Name

“We fool ourselves that we can protect the people we love, because if we accepted the truth we’d never let them out of our sight.”
― Fredrik Backman, The Winners