Athena

“Altogether, I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn’t shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? Good God, we’d be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, also write ourselves. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like suicide. A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe.”
― Franz Kafka

“What is love? It is not simply compassion, not simply kindness.
In compassion there are two: the one who suffers and the one who feels compassion. In kindness there are two: the one who gives and the one who receives. But in love there is only one; the two join, unite, become inseparable. The I and the you vanish. To love means to lose oneself in the beloved”
― Kazantzakis

“«Κλέφτης, σταματήστε τον! Είναι αλλοδαπός, μετανάστης. Ενώ εγώ είμαι Γερμανός, Αμερικάνος, Δανός, Νορβηγός.»
Κόφ' το Ανθρωπάκο. Είσαι και θα είσαι αιώνια ο μετανάστης. Τυχαία βρέθηκες σ’ αυτό τον κόσμο και σιωπηλά θα τον αφήσεις. Κραυγάζεις επειδή φοβάσαι θανάσιμα.”
― Wilhelm Reich , Listen, Little Man!

“I'm not going to die," she said. "Not till I've seen it."
"Seen what?"
Her smile widened. "Everything.”
― V.E. Schwab, A Darker Shade of Magic