Patrick Martel

“Was there any reason to spread my attention over the rest of the world if I was happy here and now?

There wasn't - and perhaps that was precisely why I realized that as the summer approached my interest in the rest of the city began to awaken. Not because the river, the boathouse and David were no longer enough for me, but precisely because I was so full of them that I would have liked to embrace everything without thinking too much. Does a flower open because it lacks something? No, it shows the depths of its soul because it's so full of itself that otherwise it would burst.”
― H.M. van den Brink, On the Water