Najada Zylyftari

“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

“You never will derive so much delight from seeing a glorious little woman in the arms of a third party, as you would have felt if you had seen Dot run into the Carrier’s embrace.  It was the most complete, unmitigated, soul-fraught little piece of earnestness that ever you beheld in all your days.”
― Charles Dickens, The Cricket on the Hearth

“There is no power that can release a person from pain or from the sadness one might feel as a result of that insight—unless it be that person himself.”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats

“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