Mike K

“What if I forgave myself? I thought. What if I forgave myself even though I'd done something I shouldn't have? What if I was a liar and a cheat and there was no excuse for what I'd done other than because it was what I wanted and needed to do? What if I was sorry, but if I could go back in time I wouldn't do anything differently than I had done? What if I'd actually wanted to fuck every one of those men? What if heroin taught me something? What if yes was the right answer instead of no? What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn't have done was what also had got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“He learned about life at sixteen, first from Dostoevsky and then from the whores of New Orleans.”
― Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America

“And you’re alone, but not lonely.” It was still early, and they were the only customers in the bar. Music from a jazz trio played softly in the background. “I suppose,” Tsukuru said after some hesitation.”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“It took me no time at all to notice that this nothing, this hole where a head should have been was no ordinary vacancy, no mere nothing. On the contrary, it was very much occupied. It was a vast emptiness vastly filled, a nothing that found room for everything - room for grass, trees, shadowy distant hills, and far above them snow-peaks like a row of angular clouds riding the blue sky. I had lost a head and gained a world.”
― Douglas E. Harding, On Having No Head: Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious