Marilou K.

“From the earliest age, we must learn to say good-bye to friends and family. We see our parents and siblings off at the station; we visit cousins, attend schools, join the regiment; we marry, or travel abroad. It is part of the human experience that we are constantly gripping a good fellow by the shoulders and wishing him well, taking comfort from the notion that we will hear word of him soon enough. But experience is less likely to teach us how to bid our dearest possessions adieu. And if it were to? We wouldn’t welcome the education. For eventually, we come to hold our dearest possessions more closely than we hold our friends. We carry them from place to place, often at considerable expense and inconvenience; we dust and polish their surfaces and reprimand children for playing too roughly in their vicinity—all the while, allowing memories to invest them with greater and greater importance. This armoire, we are prone to recall, is the very one in which we hid as a boy; and it was these silver candelabra that lined our table on Christmas Eve; and it was with this handkerchief that she once dried her tears, et cetera, et cetera. Until we imagine that these carefully preserved possessions might give us genuine solace in the face of a lost companion.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“If they (ghosts) wander the halls of night, it is not from a grievance with or envy of the living. Rather, it is because they have no desire to see the living at all. Any more than snakes hope to see gardeners, or foxes the hounds. They wander about at midnight because at that hour they can generally do so without being harried by the sound and fury of earthly emotions. After all those years of striving and struggling, of hoping and praying, of shouldering expectations, stomaching opinions, navigating decorum, and making conversation, what they seek, quite simply, is a little peace and quiet.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“I accepted because mysterious ladies offering bourbon under the stars is very much my aesthetic.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea

“Τελείωσε το φαγητό του, πέταξε το υγρό και παγωμένο χάρτινο σακουλάκι στον κάδο των σκουπιδιών, έπλυνε το φλιτζάνι και, με το κουζινομάχαιρο στο χέρι, μάζεψε τα ψίχουλα που είχαν πέσει στο τραπέζι. Το έκανε συγκεντρωμένα για να κρατήσει τις σκέψεις του σε απόσταση και να τις αφήσει να περάσουν μία μία, αφού πρώτα τις έχει ρωτήσει τι είχαν μέσα, γιατί με τις σκέψεις κάθε προφύλαξη είναι λίγη, μερικές μας εμφανίζονται μ' ένα γλυκό ύφος υποκριτικής αθωότητας κι αμέσως, πολύ αργά όμως, εκδηλώνονται πόσο κακοήθεις είναι.”
― José Saramago, Seeing