"To know one’s own state is not a simple matter. One cannot look directly at one’s own face with one’s own eyes, for example. One has no choice but to look at one’s reflection in the mirror. Through experience, we come to believe that the image is correct, but that is all. "
— Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)

"Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love."
— Czesław Miłosz (Selected Poems)

"Nobody knew how to be what they were right. "
— John Barth (Lost in the Funhouse)

"Now, as Rilke would say, let's eat us
some effing panther and swan, shall we?"
— Jason Bredle (Pain Fantasy)

"I'm going void
which is like numb
but higher up on the pain scale"
— Melissa Severin (Brute Fact)