Ásta Ólafs

“People always talked about having children as an event, as a thing that took place, they forgot that not having children was also something that took place, that is to say it wasn’t a question of absence, a question of lack, it had its own presence in the world, it was its own event.”
― Katie Kitamura, Audition

“Ironically, it is familiarity that estranges people. We repeat the same things 'til we run out of new ways to say them. Then we grow tired of saying them and of hearing them said, and our guarded silence turning into a way of life 'til we find ourselves drifting like two rudderless steamboats with their engines off.
We misstake familiarty for intimacy. It is not intimacy. All it is, is habit. And habit is a shorthand for silence.”
― André Aciman, Room on the Sea

“For a book is a fragile thing. It’s nothing but the spores of plants, blown by wind, until it’s captured on paper. And once it’s on paper, it still must be a book.”
― Rex Pickett, The Archivist: A Thriller

“For a conversation to unroll between two persons you need a base of sympathy. People with completely different ideas and incompatible interests, if they share a degree of sympathy and warmth between them, can talk for hours. People with identical interests, without sympathy, live in silence.”
― André Aciman, Room on the Sea