"Be not simply good. Be good for something."
— Henry David Thoreau

"“People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.”"
— Milan Kundera

"There is no perfection only life"
— Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)

"They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend. Things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end."
— Jhumpa Lahiri (The Namesake)

"still, there are times i am bewildered by each mile i have traveled, each meal i have eaten, each person i have known, each room in which i have slept. as ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination."
— Jhumpa Lahiri (Interpreter of Maladies)