Ada

“We are sometimes so happy, and never in our lives have we known more unhappiness. It’s as if we were working together on the same statue, cutting it out of each other’s misery. But I don’t even know the design.”
― Graham Greene, The End of the Affair

“In the superficial activity of her life, she was all English. She even thought in English. But her long blanks and darkness of abstraction were Polish.”
― D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow

“You take a different view of your actions when you come to understand, when you are made to understand every day that your existence is necessary - you see, absolutely necessary - to another person.”
― Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

“it may be that it is this very dulness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and welcome. Nevertheless, there can be but few of us who had never known one of these rare moments of awakening when we see, hear, understand so much--everything--in a flash--before we fall back again into our agreeable somnolence.”
― Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim