Mary

“if a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“Regret is so much harder to live with than failure,”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“Most people, the minute they meet you, were sizing you up for some competition for resources. It was as if everyone lived in fear of a shipwreck, where only so many people would fit on the lifeboat, and they were constantly trying to stake out their property and identify dispensable people – people they could get rid of.... Everyone is trying to reassure themselves: I'm not going to get kicked off the boat, they are. They're always separating people into two groups, allies and dispensable people... The number of people who want to understand what you're like instead of trying to figure out whether you get to stay on the boat - it's really limited.”
― Elif Batuman, The Idiot

“Someone once said that failure is easier to live with than regret, and it pierced my heart like an arrow.”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess