Karen Frances

“He was empty within. There was no stimulus, no absorbing task into which he could throw himself. But his nervous activity, his inability to be quiet,.........had indeed taken the upper hand and become his master. It was something artificial, a pressure on the nerves, a depressant, in fact......This craving for activity had become a martyrdom, but it was dissipated in a host of trivialities.”
― Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family

“Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.”
― Ezra Pound

“How mysterious night and day are, this endless procession off dark and light....I think such sad thoughts - of people in trouble and afraid, all lonely people all prisoners.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Unicorn

“I had tried years earlier to kill myself, and nearly died in the attempt, but did not consider it either a selfish or a not-selfish thing to have done. It was simply the end of what I could bear, the last afternoon of having to imagine waking up the next morning only to start all over again with a thick mind and black imaginings. It was the final outcome of a bad disease, a disease it seemed to me I would never get the better of. No amount of love from or for other people0and there was a lot-could help. No advantage of a caring family and fabulous job was enough to overcome the pain and hopelessness I felt; no passionate or romantic love, however strong, could make a difference. Nothing alive and warm could make its way in through my carapace. I knew my life to be a shambles, and I believed-incontestably-that my family, friends, and patients would be better off without me. There wasn't much of me left anymore, anyway, and I thought my death would free up the wasted energies and well-meant efforts that were being wasted on my behalf.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide