Nicole

“Do you ever feel like there are plans for you? Not ones you make, but plans for good that will come about if you trust and remain patient?”
― Katherine Reay, Dear Mr. Knightley

“Love has so many different faces that our imagination is not prepared to see them all."
"Why does it have to be so difficult?"
"Because we see only what we already know. We project our own capacities--for good as well as evil--onto the other person. Then we acknowledge as love primarily those things that correspond to our own image thereof. We wish to be loved as we ourselves would love. Any other way makes us uncomfortable. We respond with doubt and suspicion. We misinterpret the signs. We do not understand the language. We accuse. We assert that the other person does not love us. But perhaps he merely loves us in some idiosyncratic way that we fail to recognize.”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker

“The fear of death is presumably a survival instinct, Tin Win later thought. It must be an essential part of us, of every living creature. At the same time, we must transcend it to take our leave in peace. He found this an irresolvable contradiction.”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker

“She was quick of mind and swift of tongue, always ready to answer a set down with the kind of witty rebuke most of us can think of only long after the moment of insult has passed.”
― Geraldine Brooks, Year of Wonders