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“He walked down, for a long while avoiding looking at her as at the sun, but seeing her, as one does the sun, without looking.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape. ”
― William S. Burroughs

“Man shouldn’t be able to see his own face--there’s nothing more sinister. Nature gave him the gift of not being able to see it, and of not being able to stare into his own eyes.

Only in the water of rivers and ponds could he look at his face. And the very posture he had to assume was symbolic. He had to bend over, stoop down, to commit the ignominy of beholding himself.

The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“To feel wrecked, you didn’t need accumulated badness. One mess-up was all it took.”
― Susan Burton