Great-O-Khan

“stopping to look at him sprawled out on the mattress, my brilliant, long-legged man with the rumpled hair and remarkable eyes, my comrade, my fuck-buddy, my wisecracking, true-blue companion for the long road ahead, and because I hated to leave him without saying good-bye, I would mist up the air above his body with half a dozen small blasts of my lily-of-the-valley eau de cologne so that a part of me would still be there with him when he opened his eyes.”
― Paul Auster, Baumgartner

“Wir brauchen aber die Bücher, die auf uns wirken wie ein Unglück, das uns sehr schmerzt, wie der Tod eines, den wie lieber hatten als uns, wie wenn wir in Wälder verstoßen würden, von allen Menschen weg, wie ein Selbstmord, ein Buch muss die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns.”
― Franz Kafka, Briefe 1900 - 1912

“You think it will never happen to you, that it cannot happen to you, that you are the only person in the world to whom none of these things will ever happen, and then, one by one, they all begin to happen to you, in the same way they happen to everyone else.”
― Paul Auster, Winter Journal