Oyishee Ahmad

“Sometimes when I think about entities—like in “separate entities”—it gets mighty grim. I start thinking, and I nearly go to pieces.
…For instance, say you’re riding on the subway. And there are dozens of people in the car. Mere “passengers” you’d have to call them, as a rule. “Passengers” being conveyed from Aoyama 1-chome to Akasakamitsuke. Sometimes, though, it’ll strike you, that each and every one of those passengers is a distinct individual entity. Like, what does this one do? Or why on earth do you suppose that one’s riding the Ginza Line? Or whatever. By then it’s too late. You let it get to you and you’re a goner.”
― Haruki Murakami, The Elephant Vanishes

“As if tears were the necessary lubricant without which the machine of mutual communication could not work successfully, the two sisters, after these tears, started talking, not about what preoccupied them , but about unrelated things, and yet they understood eachother.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Brod discovered 613 sadnesses, each perfectly unique, each a singular emotion, no more similar to any other sadness than to anger, ecstasy, guilt, or frustration. Mirror Sadness. Sadness of Domesticated Birds. Sadness of Being Sad in Front of One's Parent. Humor Sadness. Sadness of Love Without Release.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“(D)ying is hard, but living is harder still.

—Vincent van Gogh”
― Deborah Heiligman, Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers