Void.

“Sadly, I worshipped my childhood, I was fragile and all-powerful at the same time. I had the right to rule in a world created for my pleasure, which was enough for me. What was real interested me not at all for it did not burden me. I had the time to watch the most unenterprising insect, to make a beetle go round and round, to make a string of ants climb up a stem, I had time to count my steps, and to count the numbers of stamens in the heart of a daisy. I knew all about dates, odors, shapes.”
― Hélène Cixous, Inside

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“The mercy bullet

I envy horses: if they break a leg and feel humiliated because they can no longer charge back and forth in the wind, they are cured by a mercy bullet. So if something in me gets broken, physically or spiritually, I would do well to look for a proficient killer, even if he is one of my enemies. I will pay him a fee and the price of the bullet, kiss his hand and his revolver, and if I am able to write, extol him in a poem of rare beauty, for which he can choose the metre and rhyme.”
― Mahmoud Darwish, A River Dies of Thirst: Journals

“I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can't help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year. I feel I know you so well that I couldn't have known you better if we'd been friends for twenty years. You won't fail me, will you? Only two minutes, and you've made me happy forever. Yes, happy. Who knows, perhaps you've reconciled me with myself, resolved all my doubts.

When I woke up it seemed to me that some snatch of a tune I had known for a long time, I had heard somewhere before but had forgotten, a melody of great sweetness, was coming back to me now. It seemed to me that it had been trying to emerge from my soul all my life, and only now-

If and when you fall in love, may you be happy with her. I don't need to wish her anything, for she'll be happy with you. May your sky always be clear, may your dear smile always be bright and happy, and may you be for ever blessed for that moment of bliss and happiness which you gave to another lonely and grateful heart. Isn't such a moment sufficient for the whole of one's life?”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights