Shelby Jay

“I’m beginning to think,” she said, “that growing just means learning more and more about anguish. That poison becomes your diet—you drink a little of it every day. Once you’ve seen it, you can’t stop seeing it—that’s the trouble. And it can, it can”—she passed her hand wearily over her brow again—“drive you mad.”
― James Baldwin, Another Country

“But Ged went on, falcon-winged, falcon-mad, like an unfalling arrow, like an unforgotten thought, over the Osskil Sea and eastward into the wind of winter and the night.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

“It's very hard to live with that,' said Eric.
'I mean, with the sense that one is never what one seems—never—and yet, what one seems to be is probably, in some sense, almost exactly what one is.”
― James Baldwin, Another Country

“he sat in an armchair, overlooking a foreign sea, still struggling to find the grace which would allow him to bear that revelation. For the meaning of revelation is that what is revealed is true, and must be borne.”
― James Baldwin, Another Country