Mariam

“It was
the time between the lights when colours undergo their intensification
and purples and golds burn in window-panes like the
beat of an excitable heart; when for some reason the beauty of
the world revealed and yet soon to perish (here I pushed into
the garden, for, unwisely, the door was left open and no
beadles seemed about), the beauty of the world which is so
soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish,
cutting the heart asunder.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“If I relaxed my body now, I'd fall apart. I've always lived like this, and it's the only way I know how to go on living. If I relaxed for a second, I'd never find my way back.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.”
― Emily Dickinson