Anna

“When the switch fell I could feel it upon my flesh; when it welted and ridged it was my blood that ran, and I would think with each blow of the switch: Now you are aware of me! Now I am something in your secret and selfish life, who have marked your blood with my own for ever and ever.”
― William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying

“No, it was not superstition, it was a sense of beauty that cured her of her depression and imbued her with a new will to live. The birds of fortuity had alighted once more on her shoulders. There were tears in her eyes and she was unutterably happy to hear him breathing at her side.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“The hunger for the world is bigger than the world itself and no dinner of mutton cutlets and okra is going to feed it.”
― Thrity Umrigar, First Darling of the Morning: Selected Memories of an Indian Childhood

“The conviction that the world, and therefore man too, is something which really ought not to exist is in fact calculated to instil in us indulgence towards one another: for what can be expected of beings placed in such a situation as we are? From this point of view one might indeed consider that the appropriate form of address between man and man ought to be, not monsieur, sir, but fellow sufferer, compagnon de misères. However strange this may sound it corresponds to the nature of the case, makes us see other men in a true light and reminds us of what are the most necessary of all things: tolerance, patience, forbearance and charity, which each of us needs and which each of us therefore owes.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism: The Essays