Angelica

“But love is much like a dam: if you allow a tiny crack to form through which
only a trickle of water can pass, that trickle will quickly bring down the whole structure, and soon no one will be able to control the force of the current. For when those walls come down, then love takes over, and it no longer matters what is possible or impossible; it doesn't even matter whether we can keep the loved one at our side. To love is to lose control.”
― Paulo Coelho, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

“You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.”
― Rumi

“There are neither the strong nor the weak. Can anyone say that the weak do not suffer more than the strong?”
― Shūsaku Endō, Silence

“I had been old and stern for so long, carved with regrets and years like a monolith. But that was only a shape I had been poured into. I did not have to keep it.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe