Sydney

“Lately I've been wondering whether having all of our material needs met from birth has been a positive aspect of our lives. It seems to me it may have resulted in some absence of yearning or striving in us, The quest, I like to call it. When one's parents or grandparents have already quested and conquered, what is there for the subsequent generations to do?”
― Liz Moore, The God of the Woods

“Nearly every guy I've dated believed they should already be famous, believed that greatness was their destiny and they were already behind schedule. An early moment of intimacy often involved a confession of this sort: a childhood vision, a teacher's prophecy, a genius IQ. At first, with my boyfriend in college, I believed it, too. Later, I thought I was just choosing delusional men. Now I understand it's how boys are raised to think, how they are lured into adulthood. I've met ambitious women, driven women, but no woman has ever told me that greatness was her destiny.”
― Lily King, Writers & Lovers

“The value of Greek prose composition, he said, was not that it gave one any particular facility in the language that could not be gained as easily by other methods but that if done properly, off the top of one's head, it taught one to think in Greek. One's thoughts became different, he said, when forced into the confines of a rigid and unfamiliar tongue. Certain common ideas become inexpressible; other, previously undreamt-of ones spring to life, finding miraculous new articulation.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“He felt the burden of being their living witness. Somehow the silliest details of their days were, to him, sacred. And he believed that if only the dominant culture could see these small moments, they would see their own human lives reflected in the other.”
― Luis Alberto Urrea, The House of Broken Angels