Em

“And O there are days in this life, worth life and worth death.”
― Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

“It is new, indeed, for I made it last night in a dream of strange cities; and dreams are older than brooding Tyre, or the contemplative Sphinx, or garden-girdled Babylon.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories

“Our friends have left us
Perhaps we never saw them, perhaps
we encountered them when sleep
still brought us very close to the breathing wave
perhaps we search for them because we search for the other life,
beyond the statues.”
― Giorgos Seferis

“You’re not doing too well. You barely eat. You don’t sleep enough. You don’t do things to keep your mind active. You don’t read. She says, Only in America do you have the luxury of being depressed. She says, Change your clothes. Brush your teeth. Wash your face. Moisturize. Exercise. Get yourself together. She says, Now is not the time to give up. It’s only going to get harder. You need to figure this out. And sometimes I say things back. Figure what out? I ask, but she doesn’t answer. Figure what out? I repeat, and the sound of my own voice jars me awake. I have been talking in my sleep.”
― Ling Ma, Severance