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“Happiness is an incredibly rare and dangerous emotion. I'm someone who can't bear the fall from happiness to despair. I need a safety net to prepare for it since the higher I climb, the greater my injuries will be when I fall. That's what's so frightening. You never know when an iron mace will beat you out of your drunken happiness, casting you into hell. Am I incapable of fully enjoying even the smallest moments of happiness? As soon as I'm happy, I start having ominous thoughts of ruining that happiness.”
― Dolki Min, Walking Practice

“You, dear reader, earnestly play all your parts. The roles that were assigned to you without your consent are stuck to your body like a label: A label that you can’t remove before death. A label that can’t be removed even after death. The labels are invisible. They’re not really there, you know. They’ve melted into your flesh. They may have even made their home in a deeper, more abstract part of you. You won’t be able to fish them out even if you’re sliced up to the point that your bones are exposed and your guts are spilling out of your carcass.”
― Dolki Min, Walking Practice

“Concentrate every minute like a Roman— like a man— on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can— if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered , irritable. You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life? If you can manage this, that’s all even the gods can ask of you.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“I think if I gave you my heart, you would treat it tenderly.”
― C.S. Pacat, Kings Rising