Julia the reader

“Never give your soul to a creature, because it belongs to God alone; see in all creatures a motive for rejoicing, in homage to the Creator; never seek yourself in another, but discover yourself in yourself”
― Isabelle Eberhardt, Isabelle Eberhardt: Brieven, dagboeken en verhalen

“A nomad I will remain for life,
in love with distant and uncharted places.”
― Isabelle Eberhardt

“They will all vanish at the same time, like the millions of images that lay behind the foreheads of the grandparents, dead for half a century, and of the parents, also dead. Images in which we appeared as a little girl in the midst of beings who died before we were born, just as in our own memories our small children are there next to our parents and schoolmates. And one day we’ll appear in our children’s memories, among their grandchildren and people not yet born. Like sexual desire, memory never stops. It pairs the dead with the living, real with imaginary beings, dreams with history.”
― Annie Ernaux, Les Années

“You see—I hope you never get there yourself—but some of us get to the point in life where we realise that nothing matters. Nothing fucking matters.”
― Julian Barnes, The Only Story