Lana.

“The idea of being forgotten is terrifying. I fear not just that I, personally, will be forgotten, but that we are all doomed to being forgotten—that the sum of life is ultimately nothing; that we experience joy and disappointment and aches and delights and loss, make our little mark on the world, and then we vanish, and the mark is erased, and it is as if we never existed. If you gaze into that bleakness even for a moment, the sum of life becomes null and void, because if nothing lasts, nothing matters. It means that everything we experience unfolds without a pattern, and life is just a wild, random, baffling occurrence, a scattering of notes with no melody. But if something you learn or observe or imagine can be set down and saved, and if you can see your life reflected in previous lives, and can imagine it reflected in subsequent ones, you can begin to discover order and harmony. You know that you are a part of a larger story that has shape and purpose—a tangible, familiar past and a constantly refreshed future. We are all whispering in a tin can on a string, but we are heard, so we whisper the message into the next tin can and the next string. Writing a book, just like building a library, is an act of sheer defiance. It is a declaration that you believe in the persistence of memory. In Senegal, the polite expression for saying someone died is to say his or her library has burned. When I first heard the phrase, I didn’t understand it, but over time I came to realize it was perfect. Our minds and souls contain volumes inscribed by our experiences and emotions; each individual’s consciousness is a collection of memories we’ve cataloged and stored inside us, a private library of a life lived. It is something that no one else can entirely share, one that burns down and disappears when we die. But if you can take something from that internal collection and share it—with one person or with the larger world, on the page or in a story recited—it takes on a life of its own.”
― Susan Orlean, The Library Book

“Well, I would say that every time you buy a new blouse or some wrinkle cream to make you look good, go and buy a book right away. It's just as important to keep your mind beautiful, don't you think?”
― Karen Harrington, Sure Signs of Crazy

“Sometimes it's best not to know what you are up against; if you are acutely aware of the challenges involved, you'd never do a damn thing. Being clueless is weirdly empowering. You can't worry about the things that you don't yet know you should be worried about. You end up doing wonderful things that you never would have had you been the least bit informed. You run off to Italy. You take horrific and beautiful hikes. You ruin your hair and your makeup and any chance of a future political career. And when it's all over, you can't help but feel anything but incredibly, overwhelmingly grateful (21)”
― Geraldine DeRuiter, All Over the Place: Adventures in Travel, True Love, and Petty Theft

“Rich is not writing about transcending this world...
But about transforming it. Here, and now. And what hope do we have of changing the world if we can't change our sorry-ass selves? As wisdom tends to do, the poem reveals something very simple that's been here all along: We are not the center of everything. But we are a part of everything.”
― Alison Bechdel, The Secret to Superhuman Strength