Mia

“It is easy to see things in retrospect. But I was ignorant then of everything but my own happiness, and I don’t know what else to say except that life itself seemed very magical in those days: a web of symbol, coincidence, premonition, omen. Everything, somehow, fit together; some sly and benevolent Providence was revealing itself by degrees and I felt myself trembling on the brink of a fabulous discovery, as though any morning it was all going to come together–my future, my past, the whole of my life–and I was going to sit up in bed like a thunderbolt and say oh! oh! oh!”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“LII.
For, if you think about it,
all first hatred of strangers

contains this idea of death,

of your death which will one day walk up to you
in just such a fashion.
Buon giorno, death will say.

LIII.
What is the holiness of conversation?

It is
to master death.”
― Anne Carson, Glass, Irony and God

“We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won't do harm - yes, choose a place where you won't do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.”
― Czeslaw Milosz