Najada Zylyftari

“I have said that Caleb and his poor Blind Daughter lived here.  I should have said that Caleb lived here, and his poor Blind Daughter somewhere else - in an enchanted home of Caleb’s furnishing, where scarcity and shabbiness were not, and trouble never entered.  Caleb was no sorcerer, but in the only magic art that still remains to us, the magic of devoted, deathless love, Nature had been the mistress of his study; and from her teaching, all the wonder came.”
― Charles Dickens, The Cricket on the Hearth

“She had experienced so much sorrow of her own, so much of life, that she knew better than to press for access to his places of refuge. She had witnessed herself how individuals became prisoners of these strongholds, of their loneliness, confined therein until their dying day.”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats

“I remember these things clearly because that was how my mother loved you, not through white lies and constant verbal affirmation, but in subtle observations of what brought you joy, pocketed away to make you feel comforted and cared for without even realizing it.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

“Every one of us knows fear,” he said. “So well! It encircles us like flies around ox dung. It puts animals to flight. They bolt and run or fly or swim until they believe themselves safe or until they keel over dead from exhaustion. Humans are no wiser. We see that there is no place on earth where we can hide from fear, yet still we attempt to find one. We strive for wealth and power. We abandon ourselves to the illusion that we are stronger than fear. We try to rule—over our children and our wives, over our neighbors and our friends. Ambition and fear have something in common: neither knows any limits. But with power and wealth it is just as with the opium I sampled more than once in my youth—neither keeps its promises. Opium never brought me eternal happiness. It only demanded more and more of me. Money and power do not vanquish fear. There is only one force more powerful than fear.”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats