Alexandra

“Am doing what you see - lying under a rick. The space occupied by my body is small indeed compared with the surrounding immensity in which it has neither part nor lot, and the portion of time allotted to me here on earth is insignificant indeed compared with the eternity which I have never known, and shall never enter! Yet in the same atom, in this same mathematical point which I call my body, the blood circulates, and the brain operates at will. A fine discrepancy for you - a fine futility!"
"I would remark that what you have just said applies to every human being in creation."
"True. What I mean is that my parents know not a single tedious moment, nor are in the least distressed with the thought of their insignificance - it is a thought which never stinks in their nostrils, whereas I - well, I feel nothing but weariness and rancour in my breast.”
― Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

“his drily fastidious, passionate, Frenchified, misanthropic soul was incapable of castle building.”
― Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

“She's the one married to Dad."
"That was her choice," I said. "She needs to be firmer, lay down the law for Dad instead of getting hysterical all the time. What Dad needs is a strong woman."
"A caryatid wouldn't be strong enough for Dad."
"What's that?"
"Pillars shaped like women," Lori said. " "The ones holding up those Greek temples with their heads. I was looking at a picture of some the other day, thinking, Those women have the second toughest job in the world.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“Arren waited for him in the hot, leaf-speckled sunlight. He knew that Sparrowhawk was ashamed to burden Arren with his emotion, and indeed there was nothing the boy could do or say. But his heart went out utterly to his companion, not now with that first romantic ardour and adoration, but painfully as if a link were drawn forth from the very inmost of it and forged into an unbreaking bond. For in this love he now felt there was compassion: without which love is untempered, and is not whole, and does not last.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore