Rick Wiechert

“I swear I will never mention love or death inside a house,
And I swear I never will translate myself at all, only to him or her who privately stays with me in the open air.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“How do men convince themselves that others must die so they might live?”
― Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land

“You're playing with Pandora's box. Sometimes it's better not to open it. Sometimes, it's better not to know.”
― Tatiana de Rosnay, Sarah's Key

“What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do? What a waste, what a senseless waste! But what of those things which you actually didn’t like, not because you were not supposed to like them, not because to dislike them was considered a mark of refinement and education—but because you actually found them distasteful? The very idea annoyed me. How could you know? It involved a problem of choice. I would have to weigh many things carefully before deciding and there would be some things that would cause quite a bit of trouble, simply because I had never formed a personal attitude toward so much. I had accepted the accepted attitudes and it had made life seem simple … But”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man