Nicole

“Do you know, Àntonia, since I've been away, I think of you more often than of any one else in this part of the world. I'd have liked you to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sister- anything that a woman can be to a man. The idea of you is a part of my mind; you influence my likes and my dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of time when I don't realize it. You really are a part of me.”
― Willa Cather, My Ántonia

“There was nothing ugly in the small, unprepossessing figure of this emancipated woman, but the expression on her face made a bad impression on the viewer. One felt inclined to ask: "What's the matter? Are you hungry? Bored? Afraid? Why so tense?" Just like Sitnikov, she was always anxious. She spoke and moved in a rather casual, though awkward,manner: she obviously considered herself a good-natured, simple creature; at the same time, no matter what she did, it always seemed that she didn't want to be doing that. Everything she did appeared to be done on purpose, as children say, that is, neither simply nor naturally.”
― Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

“Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.”
― Peter A. Levine

“Sometimes the greatest scientific breakthroughs happen because someone ignores the prevailing pessimism.” –Nessa Carey, British biologist1”
― Dan Sullivan, The Gap and The Gain: The High Achievers' Guide to Happiness, Confidence, and Success