Amy Yang

“Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“She was like a drowning person, flailing, reaching for anything that might save her. Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life. She learned impossibly difficult songs on her violin, songs outside of what she thought she could know, and would each time come crying to Yankel, I have learned to play this one too! It's so terrible! I must write some- thing that not even I can play! She spent evenings with the art books Yankel had bought for her in Lutsk, and each morning sulked over breakfast, They were good and fine, but not beautiful. No, not if I'm being honest with my- self. They are only the best of what exists. She spent an afternoon staring at their front door.

Waiting for someone? Yankel asked.

What color is this?

He stood very close to the door, letting the end of his nose touch the peephole. He licked the wood and joked, It certainly tastes like red.

Yes, it is red, isn't it?

Seems so.

She buried her head in her hands. But couldn't it be just a bit more red?”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that - I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much - so very much to learn.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Journals of Sylvia Plath