Peter

“People dread silence because it is transparent; like clear water, which reveals every obstacle—the used, the dead, the drowned, silence reveals the cast-off words and thoughts dropped in to obscure its clear stream. And when people stare too close to silence they sometimes face their own reflections, their magnified shadows in the depths, and that frightens them. I know; I know.”
― Janet Frame, Scented Gardens for the Blind

“I feel as if one would only discover on one's death-bed what one ought to have lived for, and realise too late that one's life has been wasted. Any passionate and courageous life seems good in itself, yet one feels that some element of delusion is involved in giving so much passion to any humanly attainable object. And so irony creeps into the very springs of one's being.”
― Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays

“Reilly: The human condition...they may remember the vision they have had, but they cease to regret it, maintain themselves by the common routine, learn to avoid excessive expectation, Become tolerant of themselves and others, Giving and taking, in the usual actions what there is to give and take. They do not repine; Are contented with the morning that separates and with the evening that brings together for casual talk before the fire. Two people who know they do not understand each other, breeding children whom they do not understand and who will never understand them.

Celia: Is that the best life?

Reilly: It is a good life. Though you will not know how good until you come to the end. But you will want nothing else, and the other life will be only like a book you have read once, and lost. In a world of lunacy, violence, stupidity, greed...it is a good life.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party

“Whatever the heart desires, it purchases at the cost of soul”
― Lawrence Durrell