Melissa

“And without fame, a man must spend his life
Only to leave such traces upon earth
As smoke leaves in the air, or foam in the sea”
― Dante Alighieri

“how difficult it is for those of us preoccupied with the humdrum concerns of adulthood to recall how forcefully we were once buffeted by the passions and longings of youth . . . 'The older person does not realize the soul-flights of the adolescent...' (pg. 185)”
― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

“Nothing retains its form; new shapes from old
Nature, the great inventor, ceaselessly
Contrives. In all creation, be assured,
There is no death - no death, but only change
And innovation; what we men call birth
Is but a different new beginning; death
Is but to cease to be the same. Perhaps
This may have moved to that and that to this,
Yet still the sum of things remains the same.
Nothing can last, I do believe, for long
In the same image.”
― Ovid

“I made my own house be my gallows.”
― Dante Alighieri, Dante's Inferno