Brizna

“Masters to a new boy are always impressive, gradually they shrink, begin to repeat themselves, their mannerisms stand out further and further like Pinnochio's nose, you realise that their intellect is static, you cease to care what they think of you, you write them off as mere 'bleaks', inhuman, bored and embittered.
A young master comes up fresh from Oxford or Cambridge, full of ideas and charm; after a few years the ideas shrivel away, the charm becomes a convention. In order to do their job well they have to become more or less mechanical. The nicest masters are the eccentrics, but these are eccentric before their time in a way which belongs to the old, have little tricks and crotchets dipped in a petrifying stream, spinsters and proud of it.”
― Louis MacNeice, The Strings Are False

“They were all in their early thirties. An age at which it is sometimes hard to admit that what you are living is your life.”
― Alice Munro, The Moons of Jupiter

“I concluded to myself that as one gets older one cannot be friends with just anyone. You would think people's minds would get wider, more elastic, but they don't. Quite the contrary.”
― Louis MacNeice, The Strings Are False

“Last forever!' Who hasn't prayed that prayer? You were lucky to get it in the first place. The present is a freely given canvas. That it is constantly being ripped apart and washed downstream goes without saying.”
― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek