Rachel

“I’m not exaggerating. I didn’t want to remember any of it—it was so pathetic. The more I thought about my life up to then, the more I hated myself. It wasn’t that I didn’t have a few good memories—I did. A handful of happy experiences. But if you added them up, the shameful, painful memories far outnumbered the others. When I thought of how I’d been living, how I’d been approaching life, it was all so trite, so miserably pointless. Unimaginative middle-class rubbish, and I wanted to gather it all up and stuff it away in some drawer. Or else light it on fire and watch it go up in smoke (though what kind of smoke it would emit I had no idea). Anyway, I wanted to get rid of it all and start a new life in Tokyo with a clean slate as a brand-new person. Try out the new possibilities of a new me.”
― Haruki Murakami, Men Without Women

“God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other."

- Reinhold Niebuhr”
― Hector Garcia Puigcerver, Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life / The Little Book of Hygge / Lagom: The Swedish Art of Balanced Living

“Who knows? But he gave it to you with love, and love is like a prayer. So keep it carefully.”
― Ruskin Bond, Escape from Java and Other Tales of Danger

“Like I was dating a boy I grew up with and I hadn't seen him in a few years and when I did, he'd turned into someone irresistible. Obviously that whole scenario was impossible.”
― Abby Jimenez