Dawn

“All these conversations had left a certain sediment in his soul, and he didn’t know what it was. It wasn’t dissolving with time, but instead kept accumulating and accumulating.”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic

“They were without shame and without desire, like the angels. But it is not human to be without shame and without desire.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“I imagine what it must be like to stay hidden, disappear in the dusky nothing and stay still in the night. It’s not sadness, though it may sound like it. I’m thinking about people and trees and how I wish I could be silent more, be more tree than anything else, less clumsy and loud, less crow, more cool white pine, and how it’s hard not to always want something else, not just to let the savage grass grow.”
― Ada Limon, Bright Dead Things

“We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds' feet is unknown. Here we go alone, and like it better so. Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable.”
― Virginia Woolf, On Being Ill