Sophia

“I know that loneliness cannot be fully eradicated by the presence of another; but I also know that a companion is a shield, and without another person, loneliness steals in, a phantom seeping through the windows and down your throat, filling you with a sorrow nothing can answer. I cannot promise that my granddaughter won't be lonely, but I have prevented her from being alone. I have made certain that her life will have a witness.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, To Paradise

“The problem, though, with trying to be the ideal anything is that eventually the definition changes, and you realize that what you'd been pursuing all along was not a single truth but a set of expectations determined by context. You leave that context, and you leave behind those expectations, too, and then you're nothing once again.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, To Paradise

“Free from all prejudice, she yet lacked strong convictions; and though she was not put off by obstacles, she had no goal in life. She had clear ideas about many things and a variety of interests, but nothing ever fully satisfied her; nor were they ever allowed to provoke a state of inner alarm. If she had not been rich and independent, she might have thrown herself into the battle of life, experienced passion…But she had an easy life, boring as it may sometimes have been, and continued to pursue her daily round without haste or undue agitation.”
― Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

“She feels as if a book is writing itself just behind her; all she has to do is live. But there is nothing.”
― Annie Ernaux, Les Années