Gabriella

“I don’t matter, you don't matter, we're all just matter, codes, scrambles of signs and symbols, the language the world mumbles to itself, or maybe its consciousness, our eyes and ears and mouths sprouting from it like polyps, here to watch and hear and sense it. To record its events and ruptures, its growing and its rotting, its dismal spin.”
― Namwali Serpell, The Furrows

“I couldn't conceive a position in which life would not be a misery, that we are all created to be miserable, and that we all know it, and all invent means of deceiving each other. And when one sees the truth, what is one to do?”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“It seemed, rather, a way, like many, to convince oneself that there is always a slender branch of one's life to hang on to, and, by being suspended there, get used to the inevitability of falling.”
― Elena Ferrante, The Lost Daughter

“She, Betty Fernandez, spoke only of people, those she’d seen in the street or those she knew, about how they were, the things still left for sale in the shops, extra rations of milk and fish, good ways of dealing with shortages, with cold and constant hunger, she was always concerned with the practical details of life, she didn’t go beyond that, always a good friend, very loyal and affectionate.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Lover