Desiree

“You know what I think?" she says. "That people's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn't matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They're all just fuel. Advertising fillers in the newspaper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills: when you feed 'em to the fire, they're all just paper. The fire isn't thinking 'Oh, this is Kant,' or 'Oh, this is the Yomiuri evening edition,' or 'Nice tits,' while it burns. To the fire, they're nothing but scraps of paper. It's the exact same thing. Important memories, not-so-important memories, totally useless memories: there's no distinction--they're all just fuel.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“How little we know the ones we love. How little we know of anyone, in the end.”
― Aria Beth Sloss, Autobiography of Us

“But what seems like a reasonable distance to one person might feel too far to somebody else.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“the worst thing," he told me,
"is bitterness, people end up so
bitter.”
― Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense