Aadya

“Not only are selves conditional but they die. Each day, we wake slightly altered, and the person we were yesterday is dead. So why, one could say, be afraid of death, when death comes all the time?”
― John Updike, Self-Consciousness

“He was liked when noticed, but not noticed much, and that did him no harm either.”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“They made it plain to everyone, however, and above all to the king himself, that although he had plenty of troops, he did not have many men.”
― Herodotus, The Histories

“It was just a question of not looking too closely at things. Close-up, the mad weave was bizarre and imageless, but from a distance a pattern could perhaps be discerned and somewhere within it all that she knew: her family, her friends and then herself, all of them busily plaiting and seeing, creating the small corner of life they would one day look back, together or apart, as their own. She supposed one only found out how one compared by looking at the picture. It was the final result and she would wait for it, as those around her were now waiting.”
― Rachel Cusk, Saving Agnes