Kamila Friedrich

“As we are a doomed race, chained to a sinking ship, as the whole thing is a bad joke, let us, at any rate, do our part; mitigate the suffering of our fellow-prisoners; decorate the dungeon with flowers and air-cushions; be as decent as we possibly can.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own intelligence!”
― Immanuel Kant

“What're you reading?"
"Gertrude Stein."
I shook my head. I'd never heard of her.
"The poet?" he asked. "You know, 'A rose is a rose is a rose'?"
I shook my head again.
"During the last year of her life, my mother became obsessed with her," Grant said. "She'd spent most of her life reading the Victorian poets, and when she found Gertrude Stein, she told me she was a comfort."
"What does she mean, 'A rose is a rose is a rose'?" I asked. Snapping the biology book shut, I was confronted with the skeleton of a human body. I tapped the empty eye socket.
"That things just are what they are," he said.
" 'A rose is a rose.' "
" 'Is a rose,' " he finished, smiling faintly.
I thought about all the roses in the garden below, their varying shades of color and youth. "Except when it's yellow," I said. "Or red, or pink, or unopened, or dying."
"That's what I've always thought," said Grant. "But I'm giving Ms. Stein the opportunity to convince me.”
― Vanessa Diffenbaugh, The Language of Flowers

“Find what you love and let it kill you.”
― Charles Bukowski