Caroline

“Before Plato could describe love, the loved one had to be invented. We would never love anybody if we could see past our invention. Bosie is my creation, my poem. In the mirror of invention, love discovered itself.”
― Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

“postremo pereunt imbres, ubi eos pater aether
in gremium matris terrai praecipitavit;
at nitidae surgunt fruges ramique virescunt
arboribus, crescunt ipsae fetuque gravantur.
hinc alitur porro nostrum genus atque ferarum,
hinc laetas urbes pueris florere videmus
frondiferasque novis avibus canere undique silvas,
hinc fessae pecudes pinguis per pabula laeta
corpora deponunt et candens lacteus umor
uberibus manat distentis, hinc nova proles
artubus infirmis teneras lasciva per herbas
ludit lacte mero mentes perculsa novellas.
haud igitur penitus pereunt quaecumque videntur,
quando alit ex alio reficit natura nec ullam
rem gigni patitur nisi morte adiuta aliena.”
― Titus Lucretius Carus, De Rerum Natura: Bks. 1-6

“Is everyone to go off and lock the door and sit secluded like the lonely writers do, in a soundproof cell, summoning people out of words and then proposing that these word people are closer to the real thing than the real people that we mangle with our ignorance every day? The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful consideration, getting them wrong again.”
― Philip Roth, American Pastoral

“Embryos think with each stage of their development that they have now reached the only condition that really suits them. This, they say, must certainly be their last, inasmuch as its close will be so great a shock that nothing can survive it. Every change is a shock; every shock is a pro tanto death. What we call death is only a shock great enough to destroy our power to recognize a past and a present as resembling one another. ”
― Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh