Viki

“What was joy, anyway. What was the worth of happiness that left behind a crater thrice the size of its impact. What did people who spoke of joy know of what it meant, to sleep and dream only of the whistle of planes and knocks at the door and on windows and to wake with a hand at one's throat— one's own hand, at one's own throat. What did they know of not speaking for days, of not having known the touch of another, never having known, of want and of not having felt the press of skin to one's own, and what did they know of a house that only ever emptied out. Of animals dying and fathers dying and mothers dying and finding bullet holes in the barks of trees right below hearts carved around names of people who weren't there and the bloody lip of a sibling and what did what did she know— of what could she possibly know of what it—”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“Spreading his fingers out in the whiteness, Takeru let everything flow to the mountain. The pain dispersed into a thousand snowflakes, then ten thousand, thinning like mist to the morning.

For his whole life, Takeru had been certain that he was right to cast his pain off on the mountain, that it was the only way—because how could one possibly hold so much suffering in something as small as a human form?

Yet here was this this woman who held everything inside a little body of flesh and blood without breaking”
― M.L. Wang, The Sword of Kaigen

“Memory is often our only connection to who we used to be. Memories are fossils, the bones left by dead versions of ourselves. Memory may not be the heart of what makes us human, but it's at least a vital organ. Nevertheless, we must take care not to let the bliss of the present fade when compared to supposedly better days. We're happy, sure, but were we more happy then? If we let it, memory can make shadows of the now, as nothing can match the buttressed legends of our past. Do not let memory chase you. Enjoy memories, yes, but don't be a slave to who you wish you once had been.
Those memories aren't alive. You are.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Tress of the Emerald Sea

“I'd lived enough years now to know that there were some ghosts that haunted you forever.”
― Adrienne Young, Spells for Forgetting