Lady Jane

“He lived in sight of both worlds, but he looked toward the unknown. And he was a scholar.... You can still live on that shimmering line between your old thinking and your new understanding, always in a state of learning. In the figurative sense, this is a border that is always moving-- as you advance forward in your studies and realizations, that mysterious forest of the unknown always stays a few feet ahead of you, so you have to travel light in order to keep following it. You have to stay mobile, movable, supple.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“London? Paris? Berlin? Zurich? Maybe Brussels, center of the young union? They all strive to outdo one another culturally, architecturally, politically, fiscally. But Rome, it should be said, has not bothered to join the race for status. Rome doesn't compete. Rome just watches all the fussing and striving, completely unfazed, exuding an air like: 'Hey- do whatever you want, but I'm still Rome. I am inspired by the regal self-assurance of this town, so grounded and rounded, so amused and monumental, knowing that she is held securely in the palm of history. I would like to be Rome when I am an old lady.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“These memories of former times do not awaken desire so much as sorrow-- a vast, inapprehensible melancholy. Once we had such desires-- but they return not. They are past, they belong to another world that is gone from us. They are completely lost to us. They arise no more; we are dead and they stand remote on the horizon, they are a mysterious reflection, an apparition that haunts us, that we fear and love without hope. They are unattainable and we know it.

And even if these scenes of our youth were given back to us, we would hardly know what to do. The tender, secret influence that passed from them into us could not rise again. We might remember and love them and be stirred by the sight of them. But it would be like gazing at the photograph of a dead comrade; those are his features, it is his face, and the days we spent together take on a mournful life in memory; but the man himself it is not.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“Marvel hates her because she's pretty and doesn't have any kids to worry about.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander