Alaina

“Nothing's worth any effort in the end," he said to Laura, "because everyone is going to die and there is nothing in the world that will stop them from dying. Nothing lasts. A few things last longer than most people live, but they go too. Hope goes, and desire and wonder and fear and eagerness. Love lasts a few minutes longer, that's all. A minute or a month or an hour. The paper match burns down until it singes your fingers and goes out, and there you are in the dark again, rubbing your two little sticks together. But this is the last time, the last match. There won't be any more light. No more. And no more noise of things moving or of animals lying down. Only our separate, untouching selves, and soon not even that.”
― Peter S. Beagle, A Fine and Private Place

“Take the light inside you like a blessing, like a knee in the chest,
holding onto it and not letting go. Now let it go.”
― Richard Siken, Crush