Linne

“In his life he too, like all people, had harboured ideas and dreams. Some he had fulfilled for himself; some had been granted to him. Many things had remained out of reach, or barely had he reached them than they were torn from his hands again. But he was still here. And in the mornings after the first snowmelt, when he walked across the dew-soaked meadow outside his hut and lay down on one of the flat rocks scattered there, the cool stone at his back and the first warm rays of sun on his face, he felt that many things had not gone so badly after all.”
― Robert Seethaler, Ein ganzes Leben

“Revenge may be exacted a hundred times over in one sleepless night. The impulse, the dreaming intention, is human, normal, and we should forgive ourselves. But the raised hand, the actual violent enactment, is cursed. The maths says so. There’ll be no reversion to the status quo ante, no balm, no sweet relief, or none that lasts. Only a second crime. Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves, Confucius said. Revenge unstitches a civilisation. It’s a reversion to constant, visceral fear.”
― Ian McEwan, Nutshell

“As I listened I felt a dull numbness, like the effect of chloroform, rather than the primal, anarchic agony you usually feel when you encounter someone you have loved now turned to dust, in some object like a little bowl, and you are required to believe that it is still the same person who once smiled at you.”
― Magda Szabó, The Door

“Hunting, bathing, gaming, laughing: that's living (venari lavare ludere ridere occest vivere).”
― Mary Beard, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome