Victoria

“It is the things we most want to put down, the things that are hardest to carry, to endure, that give our lives the most meaning. Sometimes our burdens are taken from us. And sometimes we walk away from them. Sometimes, not having that burden might even feel good. We might feel relief. But it doesn’t take long to realize that the things we call burdens are most often ballast. Our burdens give weight to everything we do. They shed light on all that we are. And the moment we lose them . . . we lose everything.”
― Amy Harmon, The Unknown Beloved

“We all encounter the moment of agony, when our heart is hungry and the only one who could feed it, never will.”
― RJ Intindola – (Gandolfo) – 2014

“She was an historian; the past was her butter and bread. But, she thought as she made her way tot he bathroom and turned on the taps, nothing had readied her for the gentle persistent feeling growing stronger through this month, a steady rain in the back of her mind, that there was something she was missing, that she had failed somehow, that there had been a turn, back there in the road of her life, a trailhead, an opening she'd barrelled right past. Somewhere back there had been the right route, the way through, and she had missed it.”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“…it was during a period he had so much time on his hands that he felt that time had stopped.

How could time have stopped?

‘Because,’ he said, ‘and you will understand this when you are older, sometimes you feel that everything around you has come to an end. You feel that you are completely alone, that time is frozen and that you are invisible. At first, you might feel exhilarated by the sense of freedom, but then you’ll be frightened that you are lost and you will never be able to go back.’

He explained that when he first felt this, he had been isolated and afraid and had prised open his watch case to verify that time was indeed passing. The rhythm of the watch might have been imagined. Sound was not enough, he needed to see and touch it. It was the first time that he had dismantled a mechanism. The turning wheels, ticking each second away, had reassured him.

It was then that he had comprehended the importance of time.”
― Ariana Neumann, When Time Stopped: A Memoir of My Father's War and What Remains