Jolene Ren

“Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don't know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It's that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don't know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.”
― Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

“If you prick us, do we not bleed? It you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”
― Henryk Szpilman: [ Shakespeare's 'The Merchant of Venice']

“Burning my dreams away beside the fire: For death has made me wise and bitter and strong; And I am rich in all that I have lost.”
― Siegfried Sassoon

“If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”
― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice