Dimitris

“Please,” Shallan said to the sphere. “I need you to become fire.”
Pattern buzzed, speaking with a new voice, interpreting the sphere’s words. “I am a stick,” he said. He sounded satisfied.
“You could be fire,” Shallan said.
“I am a stick.”
The stick was not particularly eloquent. She supposed that she shouldn’t be surprised.
“Why don’t you become fire instead?”
“I am a stick.”
“How do I make it change?” Shallan asked of Pattern.
“Mm . . . I do not know. You must persuade it. Offer it truths, I think?” He sounded agitated. “This place is dangerous for you. For us. Please. Speed.”
She looked back at the stick.
“You want to burn.”
“I am a stick.”
“Think how much fun it would be?”
“I am a stick.”
“Stormlight,” Shallan said. “You could have it! All that I’m holding.”
A pause. Finally, “I am a stick.”
“Sticks need Stormlight. For . . . things . . .” Shallan blinked away tears of fatigue.
“I am—”
“—a stick,” Shallan said.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Words of Radiance

“Maybe we're just born to love and worry about the people we know, and to go on loving and worrying even when there are more important things we should be doing. And if that means the human species is going to die out, isn't it in a way a nice reason to die out, the nicest reason you can imagine? Because when we should have been reorganising the distribution of the world's resources and transitioning collectively to a sustainable economic model, we were worrying about sex and friendship instead. Because we loved each other too much and found each other too interesting. And I love that about humanity, and in fact it's the very reason I root for us to survive - because we are so stupid about each other.”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

“Habit is the ballast that chains the dog to his vomit.”
― Samuel Beckett

“And in that moment, he was finally able to accept it all. In the deepest recesses of his soul, Tsukuru Tazaki understood. One heart is not connected to another through harmony alone. They are, instead, linked deeply through their wounds. Pain linked to pain, fragility to fragility. There is no silence without a cry of grief, no forgiveness without bloodshed, no acceptance without a passage through acute loss. That is what lies at the root of true harmony.”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage