Stiffe

“He would never know, just as the people we buy the newspaper from and then fantasize about all night have no idea that this particular inflection on their face or that tan along their exposed shoulder will give us no end of pleasure when we’re alone.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Der Gedanke, im Leben vorwärtskommen zu küssen, fühlt sich in unserer Gesellschaft ganz natürlich an. Es ist der Fluch der Moderne: Schau, dass du weiterkommst! [...] Wer sich im Kreis dreht, gilt als Simpel. Dabei: Wer sich im Kreis dreht, macht keineswegs zwangsläufig immer dieselben Erfahrungen, er verfeinert deine Erfahrungen, er vertieft sie mit der Zeit. Vielleicht hat, wer sich im Kreis dreht, Anteil am Unendlichen.
Im Übrigen ist es ein Denkfehler zu meinen, wenn eins ein intensives Leben haben will, müssen Wiederholungen gemieden werden. Wer ein intensives Leben haben will, muss die Wiederholung suchen. Ein Musikinstrument erlerne ich nicht zuletzt durch Wiederholung. Wiederholung ist Beharren und aus dem Beharren entstehen Fähigkeiten. Die sich allmählich ausbildenden Fähigkeiten öffnen den Weg zu Intensität und Tiefe.”
― Arno Geiger, Das glückliche Geheimnis

“Sometimes when you read, it's like certain sentences strike home and knock you flat. It's as if they say everything you have tried to say, or tried to do, or everything you are. As a rule, what you are is one simmering, endless longing.”
― Gunnhild Øyehaug, Knots: Stories

“It is easy to mourn the lives we aren't living. Easy to wish we'd developed other other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we'd worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga.
It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn't make and the work we didn't do the people we didn't do and the people we didn't marry and the children we didn't have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out.
But it is not lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy.
We can't tell if any of those other versions would of been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library