Justin

“Trying, he thought, to express some unutterable truth about themselves. Which was that translation was impossible. That the realm of pure meaning they captured and manifested would and could not ever be known. That the enterprise of this tower had been impossible from inception. For how could there ever be an Adamic language? The thought now made him laugh. There was no innate, perfectly comprehensible language. There was no candidate - not English, not French - that could bully and absorb enough to become one. Language was just difference. A thousand different ways of seeing, of moving through the world. No, a thousand worlds within one. And translation, a necessary endeavor however futile, to move between them.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“Why, is it such a bad thing to die?”
― Han Kang, The Vegetarian

“Ah yes, all unfinished stories make you sad.” “That’s why we are driven to finish our work. To escape that sadness.” “To escape the melancholy of untold history.”
― Minsoo Kang, The Melancholy of Untold History

“You are in every line I have ever read.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations