Emily

“It was a strange business and it made a sad and curious impression on me; everything that had belonged to me in these earlier years of my life left me, was alien and lost to me. I suddenly saw how sad and artificial my life had been during this period, for the loves, friends, habits and pleasures of these years were discarded like badly fitting clothes. I parted from them without pain and all that remained was to wonder that I could have endured them so long.”
― Hermann Hesse, Gertrude

“I have always been a little disconcerted by the passion women have for behaving beautifully at the deathbed of those they love. Sometimes it seems as if they grudge the longevity which postpones their chance of an effective scene.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence

“It was a night so beautiful that your soul seemed hardly able to bear the prison of the body.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence

“Avoiding risk is not much of a goal...whether you crawl into a hole or walk a high wire, nobody gets out of here alive. We cannot grow without challenge.”
― Steven Callahan, Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea