Rachel B

“There are two categories of friendship: those in which people enliven one another and those in which people must be enlivened to be with one another. In the first category one clears the decks to be together; in the second one looks for an empty space in the schedule.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City

“In most novels it is taken for granted that people over fifty are as set in their ways as elderly apple trees, and as permanently shaped and scarred by the years they have weathered. The literary convention is that nothing major can happen to them except through subtraction.”
― Alison Lurie, Foreign Affairs

“When I received this Andalusian letter I collapsed: Tehran came flooding back to me, the memories of Damascus too, Paris, Vienna, suddenly tinted, the way a simple ray of light is enough to give its tonality to the immense sky of evening, sadness and bitterness. Dr.”
― Mathias Énard, Compass

“Having said that, the enchanted wanderer seemed to feel prophetic inspiration coming upon him anew and lapsed into quiet concentration, which none of his interlocutors ventured to interrupt with any new question. And what more could they have asked him? He had divulged the story of his past with all the candor of his simple soul, and his predictions remained in the hands of Him who conceals their destinies from the wise and prudent and only sometimes reveals them unto babes.”
― Nikolai Leskov, The Enchanted Wanderer: and Other Stories