Alyssa Rogers

“Then what's a synonym for woman?"
"Entrails."
"You're not very poetic, are you? Well, then, what's the antonym for entrails?"
"Milk.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“Night has fallen, and morning will come too,” Kenji said while gazing at the paddy field. “Spring will arrive, and Autumn too. Everything is split in halves. The grass grows, trees wither, animals are born, and they die……when you live with the land, you slowly come to understand that nature is made up of halves. When something bad happens……when a storm or erosion happens, we feel like bad things will only continue. But in truth, the good and the bad, they are all part of nature……part of living. That’s how everyone in the village thinks.”

“I do not understand,” Akutagawa said, looking at the same scenery. “So fortune and misfortune are equal halves? Do you want to say the same thing to my comrades who died in the slums?”

“That is why you’re the half that’s left, Akutagawa-san.” Kenji looked at Akutagawa. “You survived. And with a very powerful Ability, too. Everybody passed on their good halves to you, I’m sure.”
― Kafka Asagiri

“In the end, people don't view their life as merely the average of all its moments—which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens. Measurements of people's minute-by-minute levels of pleasure and pain miss this fundamental aspect of human existence. A seemingly happy life maybe empty. A seemingly difficult life may be devoted to a great cause. We have purposes larger than ourselves.”
― Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

“What is society but an individual?”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human