sisi

“Dear Milena,
I wish the world were ending tomorrow. Then I could take the next train, arrive at your doorstep in Vienna, and say: “Come with me, Milena. We are going to love each other without scruples or fear or restraint. Because the world is ending tomorrow.” Perhaps we don’t love unreasonably because we think we have time, or have to reckon with time. But what if we don't have time? Or what if time, as we know it, is irrelevant? Ah, if only the world were ending tomorrow. We could help each other very much.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“Nothing ever comes to an end. Wherever one has sunk roots that emanate from one’s best or truest self, one will always find a home. To return is not to revisit something that has failed. I can walk along the old paths without bitterness that other feet are now taking pleasure in them. The sea is there just as it always has been.”
― Liv Ullmann

“We were taught to value love yet not to rely on it too heavily, because the world of excessive freedom in which we had been made would not foster the long-suffering loyalty that love required. We were encouraged to care deeply about the state of our world but our ability to affect it personally was very much in doubt. In general, we were told that the distance between desire and obligation had been closed in the preceding decades, but everyone seemed to agree that the absence of obligation would not free us. Most of all we found ourselves believing in complexity. This paradigm had some merit; it allowed us to avoid extreme states of dogma and ignorance, like militarism or participation in pyramid schemes.”
― Lillian Fishman, Acts of Service

“If you make plenty of money but don't have any kids, you might get called successful. But unless you have kids, no one will ever call you a great woman.”
― Mieko Kawakami, All the Lovers in the Night