Martaa

“A što može da očekuje od tih ljudi? Možda sažaljenje? To je jedino što mu ne treba i što mu nikad nije trebalo. Saučešće koje su mu ponekad pokazivali rijetki dobri i plemeniti ljudi za njega je samo mjera njegove zle sreće i besprimjernog poniženja. I za pokojnike sažaljenje je teško i uvredljivo, a kako ga je tek snositi još zdrav i svjestan svega, živ gledati u oči živim ljudima, da bi u njima pročitao samo jedno: sažaljenje?”
― Ivo Andrić, Prokleta avlija

“Don’t you want to be alive before you die?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“You still waste time with those things, Lenu? We are flying over a ball of fire. The part that has cooled floats on the lava. On that part we construct the buildings, the bridges, and the streets, and every so often the lava comes out of Vesuvius or causes an earthquake that destroys everything. There are microbes everywhere that make us sick and die. There are wars. There is a poverty that makes us all cruel. Every second something might happen that will cause you such suffering that you'll never have enough tears. And what are you doing? A theology course in which you struggle to understand what the Holy Spirit is? Forget it, it was the Devil who invented the world, not the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Do you want to see the string of pearls that Stefano gave me?”
― Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend

“So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See