Lucia

“Current-borne, wave-flung, tugged hugely by the whole might of ocean, the jellyfish drifts in the tidal abyss. The light shines through it, and the dark enters it. Borne, flung, tugged from anywhere to anywhere, for in the deep sea there is no compass but nearer and farther, higher and lower, the jellyfish hangs and sways; pulses move slight and quick within it, as the vast diurnal pulses beat in the moondriven sea. Hanging, swaying, pulsing, the most vulnerable and insubstantial creature, it has for its defense the violence and power of the whole ocean, to which it has entrusted its being, its going, and its will.

But here rise the stubborn continents. The shelves of gravel and the cliffs of rock break from water baldly into air, that dry, terrible outerspace of radiance and instability, where there is no support for life. And now, now the currents mislead and the waves betray, breaking their endless circle, to leap up in loud foam against rock and air, breaking....

What will the creature made all of seadrift do on the dry sand of daylight; what will the mind do, each morning, waking?”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

“May your Paths be safe, your Floors unbroken and may the House fill your eyes with Beauty.”
― Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

“I feel the heavy price that I and the people around me pay for this prolonged state of war. Part of this price is a shrinking of our soul's surface area - those parts of us that touch the violent, menacing world outside - and a diminished ability and willingness to empathize at all with other people in pain. We also pay the price by suspending our moral judgment, and we give up on understanding what we oursleves think. Given a situation so frightening, so deceptive, and so complicated - both morally and practically - we feel it may be better not to think or know. Better to hand over the job of thinking and doing and setting moral standards to those who are surely "in the know". Better not to feel too much until the crisis ends - and if it never ends, at least we'll have suffered a little less, developed a useful dullness, protected ourselves as much as we could with a little indiference, a little repression, a little deliberate blindness, and a large dose of self-anesthetics.”
― David Grossman, Writing in the Dark: Essays on Literature and Politics

“All I have is dreams. And now other people run them.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven