Brenda Eschbach

“To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing -- the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one's hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

“Every man carries with him through life a mirror, as unique and impossible to get rid of as his shadow.”
― W.H. Auden, The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays

“Pulvis et umbra sumus. (We are but dust and shadow.)”
― Horace, The Odes of Horace