Shishir

“There’s a low-level, specific pain in having to accept that putting up with you requires a certain generosity of spirit in your loved ones.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“Though floating on the water, I was not part of it. I thought that if I died at that moment, I would have died as I was born — without any volition of mine. All my life I had not chosen, had not decided. Now I am making a decision. I choose life. I shall live because there are a few people I want to stay with for the longest possible time and because I have duties to discharge. It is not my concern whether or not life has meaning. If I am unable to forgive, then I shall try to forget. I shall live by force and cunning. I moved my feet and arms, violently and with difficulty until the upper part of my body was above water. Like a comic actor shouting on a stage, I screamed with all my remaining strength, ‘Help! Help!”
― Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North

“One can only see what one observes, one observes only things which are already in the mind.”
― Alphonse Bertillon

“It’s his father’s fault,” she said unemotionally. “The Yozo we knew was so easy-going and amusing, and if only he hadn’t drunk—no, even though he did drink—he was a good boy, an angel.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human