Gnoe Graasland

“Peter has learned the difficult animal skill of doing nothing. He's learned to unshackle himself of the race of time and contemplate time itself. [..] It's a lesson hard learned, just to sit there and be.”
― Yann Martel, The High Mountains of Portugal

“It's a tiny, inexpungable parcel of fear, yet not incapacitating nor even a source of much worry. He never feels dread or anxiety with Odo, never anything so lingering. It rather goes like this: The ape appears without the least sound, seemingly out of nowhere, and among the emotions Peter feels--the surprise, the wonder, the pleasure, the joy--there is a pulse of fear.He can do nothing about it except wait for the pulse to go away. That is a lesson he has learned, to treat fear as a powerful but topical emotion. He is afraid only when he needs to be.”
― Yann Martel

“His heart is expended that way, of loving the single, particular individual. He loved Clara with every fibre of his being, but now he has nothing left. Or rather, he has learned to live with her absence, and he has no wish to fill that absence; that would be like losing her a second time. Instead he would prefer to be kind to everyone, a less personal but broader love.”
― Yann Martel, The High Mountains of Portugal

“From his shoulder on down, the Rat felt the supple weight of her body. An odd sensation, that weight. This being that could love a man, bear children, grow old, and die; to think one whole existence was in this weight.”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973