berry

“You still think I’m too optimistic, don’t you?” Shallan said.
“It’s not your fault,” Kaladin said. “I’d rather be like you. I’d rather not have lived the life I have. I would that the world was only full of people like you, Shallan Davar.”
“People who don’t understand pain.”
“Oh, all people understand pain,” Kaladin said. “That’s not what I’m talking about. It’s . . .”
“The sorrow,” Shallan said softly, “of watching a life crumble? Of struggling to grab it and hold on, but feeling hope become stringy sinew and blood beneath your fingers as everything collapses?”
“Yes.”
“The sensation—it’s not sorrow, but something deeper—of being broken. Of being crushed so often, and so hatefully, that emotion becomes something you can only wish for. If only you could cry, because then you’d feel something. Instead, you feel nothing. Just . . . haze and smoke inside. Like you’re already dead.”
He stopped in the chasm.
She turned and looked to him. “The crushing guilt,” she said, “of being powerless. Of wishing they’d hurt you instead of those around you. Of screaming and scrambling and hating as those you love are ruined, popped like a boil. And you have to watch their joy seeping away while you can’t do anything. They break the ones you love, and not you. And you plead. Can’t you just beat me instead?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
Shallan nodded, holding his eyes. “Yes. It would be nice if nobody in the world knew of those things, Kaladin Stormblessed. I agree. With everything I have.”
He saw it in her eyes. The anguish, the frustration. The terrible nothing that clawed inside and sought to smother her. She knew. It was there, inside. She had been broken.
Then she smiled. Oh, storms. She smiled anyway.
It was the single most beautiful thing he’d seen in his entire life.
“How?” he asked.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Words of Radiance

“I don’t know if you’ve ever felt like that. That you wanted to sleep for a thousand years. Or just not exist. Or just not be aware that you do exist. Or something like that. I think wanting that is very morbid, but I want it when I get like this. That’s why I’m trying not to think. I just want it all to stop spinning.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Please,” Shallan said to the sphere. “I need you to become fire.”
Pattern buzzed, speaking with a new voice, interpreting the sphere’s words. “I am a stick,” he said. He sounded satisfied.
“You could be fire,” Shallan said.
“I am a stick.”
The stick was not particularly eloquent. She supposed that she shouldn’t be surprised.
“Why don’t you become fire instead?”
“I am a stick.”
“How do I make it change?” Shallan asked of Pattern.
“Mm . . . I do not know. You must persuade it. Offer it truths, I think?” He sounded agitated. “This place is dangerous for you. For us. Please. Speed.”
She looked back at the stick.
“You want to burn.”
“I am a stick.”
“Think how much fun it would be?”
“I am a stick.”
“Stormlight,” Shallan said. “You could have it! All that I’m holding.”
A pause. Finally, “I am a stick.”
“Sticks need Stormlight. For . . . things . . .” Shallan blinked away tears of fatigue.
“I am—”
“—a stick,” Shallan said.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Words of Radiance