David Given Schwarm

“Illness is the most heeded of doctors: to kindness and wisdom we make promises only; pain we obey.”
― Marcel Proust, Sodom and Gomorrah

“Our desires cut across one another, and in this confused existence it is rare for happiness to coincide with the desire that clamoured for it.”
― Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove

“The time which we have at our disposal every day is elastic; the passions that we feel expand it, those that we inspire contract it; and habit fills up what remains.”
― Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower

“One thing you who had secure or happy childhoods should understand about those of us who did not. We who control our feelings, who avoid conflicts at all costs, or seem to seek them. Who are hypersensitive, self-critical, compulsive, workaholic, and above all survivors. We are not that way from perversity, and we cannot just relax and let it go. We’ve learned to cope in ways you never had to.”
― Piers Anthony