Pia

“Why can't healing happen as quickly as wounding?”
― Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land

“Well, that’s just it, I thought: you didn’t just write down a raw cry of suffering. It would be boring and self-indulgent. You had to disguise it, turn it into art. That’s what literature was. That was what required talent, and made people want to read what you wrote, and then they would give you money.”
― Elif Batuman, Either/Or

“It was the golden time of year. Every day the leaves grew brighter, the air sharper, the grass more brilliant. The sunsets seemed to expand and melt and stretch for hours, and the brick façades glowed pink, and everything got bluer. How many perfect autumns did a person get?”
― Elif Batuman, Either/Or

“Was this the decisive moment of my life? It felt as if the gap that had dogged me all my days was knitting together before my eyes— so that, from this point on, my life would be as coherent and meaningful as my favorite books. At the same time, I had a powerful sense of having escaped something: of having finally stepped outside of the script.”
― Elif Batuman, Either/Or