Odette

“You brought it on yourself.” “No! Life is just too harsh and always playing with people’s fates!” “Don’t complain about life. Life is always fair. You should complain about yourself!”
― Lu Yao, Life

“We manage to avoid being happy while struggling to become happy, fulfilling one desire after the next, banishing our fears, grasping at pleasure, recoiling from pain—and thinking, interminably, about how best to keep the whole works up and running”
― Sam Harris, Waking Up: Searching for Spirituality Without Religion

“In a flash, things can change for the better. Yet while people may feel happy with their accomplishments, they may also feel a sense of loss at the suddenness of their success.”
― Lu Yao, Life

“In the winter everyones hate was bare if you looked. She saw hate in the icicles that hung from her window; she saw it in the dirty slush on the streets; she heard it in the hail that scratched her window and bit her face; she could see it in the lowered heads hurrying to warm homes …”
― Hubert Selby Jr., Last Exit to Brooklyn