Adrianne

“You can make people believe whatever you want. You can fool them like it’s nothing. But you can’t fool yourself, not really. That’s why what matters is how you think about your work in your own lifetime, how much you respect it, how hard you’re trying. Or tried.”
― Mieko Kawakami, All The Lovers In The Night

“You used to be optimistic. You used to think that whatever we did would turn out well. Even after we came back from the north, you used to think that. Now you're cautious, you're anxious… You're pessimistic."

She knew he was right, but it wasn't right that he should speak to her accusingly, as if it was something to blame her for.

"I used to be young," was all she could find to say.”
― Philip Pullman, The Secret Commonwealth

“And Paul saw how futile were any efforts of his to change any smallest bit of this. He had thought to oppose the jihad within himself, but the jihad would be. His legions would rage out from Arrakis even without him. They needed only the legend he already had become.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“What is dying anyway? I let this impossible question fill the darkness of my bedroom. I thought about how somebody was always dying somewhere, at any given moment. This isn’t a fable or a joke or an abstract idea. People are always dying. It’s a perfect truth. No matter how we live our lives, we all die sooner or later. In which case, living is really just waiting to die. And if that’s true, why bother living at all? Why was I even alive? I made myself crazy, tossing and turning, hyperventilat- ing. Then it hit me: dying is just like sleeping. You only know you’re sleeping when you wake up the next day, but if morn- ing never comes, you sleep forever. That must be what death is like. When someone dies, they don’t even know they’re dead. Because they never see it happen, nobody ever really dies. This hit me like a sucker punch.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven