Alexandra Stuart

“Life is about deciding what matters. It's about the fantasy that determines the reality.”
― Claire Messud, The Woman Upstairs

“When I look at a beautiful painting I have tears in my eyes, but not when I look at my children. That does not mean I do not love them, because I do, with all my heart, it simply means that the meaning they produce is not sufficient to fulfill a whole life. Not mine, at any rate.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, My Struggle: Book 1

“Those who live in the country get idiotic in time, without noticing it, for a while they think it's original and good for their health, but life in the country is not original at all, for anyone who wasn't born in and for the country it shows a lack of taste and is only harmful to their health. The people who go walking in the country walk right into their own funeral in the country and at the very least they lead a grotesque existence which leads them first into idiocy, then into an absurd death.”
― Thomas Bernhard, The Loser

“I've discovered over the years that the simplest explanation is almost always the right one; and that hunger of one kind or another - desire, by another name - is the source of almost every sorrow.”
― Claire Messud, The Woman Upstairs