Zeynep

“Welcome to this ugly, maddening world in all its beauty. Grow and learn, so that you'll someday be able to help others in turn.”
― Kore Yamazaki, The Ancient Magus' Bride, Vol. 4

“History is precious; ritual is precious. Lose that and we lose the knowledge of our own being," "Lose the thread of ancestry, lose the tales, and we are adrift without identity.”
― Juliet Marillier, The Dark Mirror

“The Pond"

August of another summer, and once again
I am drinking the sun
and the lilies again are spread across the water.
I know now what they want is to touch each other.
I have not been here for many years
during which time I kept living my life.
Like the heron, who can only croak, who wishes he
could sing,
I wish I could sing.
A little thanks from every throat would be appropriate.
This is how it has been, and this is how it is:
All my life I have been able to feel happiness,
except whatever was not happiness,
which I also remember.
Each of us wears a shadow.
But just now it is summer again
and I am watching the lilies bow to each other,
then slide on the wind and the tug of desire,
close, close to one another,
Soon now, I'll turn and start for home.
And who knows, maybe I'll be singing.”
― Mary Oliver, Felicity

“But she didn't fear the moon because she was more lunar than solar and could see with wide-open eyes in the dark dawns the sinister moon in the sky. So she bathed all over in the lunar rays, as there are others who sunbathed. And was becoming profoundly limpid.”
― Clarice Lispector, An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures