Elana

“And Patrice thought another thing her mother said was definitely true—you never really knew a man until you told him you didn’t love him. That’s when his true ugliness, submerged to charm you, might surface.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Night Watchman

“Throughout the earth there are ancient forms, forms incorruptible and eternal; any one of them could be the symbol I sought. A mountain could be the speech of the god, or a river or the empire or the configuration of the stars. But in the process of the centuries the mountain is levelled and the river will change its course, empires experience mutilation and havoc and the configuration of the stars varies. There is change in the firmament. The mountain and the star are individuals and individuals perish. I sought something more tenacious, more invulnerable. I thought of the generations of cereals, of grasses, or birds, of men. Perhaps the magic would be written on my face, perhaps I myself was the end of my search.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings

“I have seen too many men willing to fight to the death over a spilled cup of wine to think dying for a cause makes that cause just.”
― Megan Whalen Turner, Return of the Thief

“We lived in the Bull Court; a city sealed in a palace, and a life sealed in with death. Yet it is a proud city, and a strong fierce life. A man once in it is of it till he dies. So I, who have gray beginning in my beard, still say "it is", as if the Bull Court stood and I might yet go back to it.”
― Mary Renault, The King Must Die