Mina

“In reality, every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to the reader to enable him to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have experienced in himself. And the recognition by the reader in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its veracity.”
― Alain de Botton, How Proust Can Change Your Life

“[...]Because at some point everyone wants to run away from their life. It's about the only thing human beings have in common”
― Julian Barnes, The Only Story

“Strange how, when you are young, you owe no duty to the future; but when you are old, you owe a duty to the past. To the one thing you can’t change.”
― Julian Barnes, The Only Story

“You realize how sympathy and antagonism can coexist. You are discovering how many seemingly incompatible emotions can thrive, side by side, in the same human heart.”
― Julian Barnes, The Only Story