readanddrepeat

“To cite another saying in Malayalam: ‘Nikkunnidathu nikkanenki odikondirikkanam’. This can be broadly translated as, ‘to remain where you are, you have to run’. Life is a treadmill; you have to keep running to stay in the same place. In other words, if you want to go further, you have to spread your wings and fly.”
― Joy Alukkas, Spreading Joy: How Joyalukkas Became the World's Favourite Jeweller

“She rested her elbow on the bar and looked at me. “Tell me,” she said. “What would you have wished for if you had been in my position?”
“On the night of my twentieth birthday, you mean?”
“Uh-huh.”
I took some time to think about that, but I couldn’t come up with a single wish.
“I can’t think of anything,” I confessed. “I’m too far away now from my twentieth birthday.”
“You really can’t think of anything?”
I nodded.
“Not one thing?”
“Not one thing.”
She looked into my eyes again—straight in—and said, “That’s because you’ve already made your wish.”
― Haruki Murakami, La chica del cumpleaños

“The old man raised both hands, palms toward her. “No, miss, don’t you give it a second thought. The kind of ‘present’ I have in mind is not something tangible, not something with a price tag. To put it simply”—he placed his hands on the desk and took one long, slow breath—”what I would like to do for a lovely young fairy such as you is to grant a wish you might have, to make your wish come true. Anything. Anything at all that you wish for—assuming that you do have such a wish.”
― Haruki Murakami, La chica del cumpleaños

“No matter how far they go, people can never be anything but themselves.”
― Haruki Murakami, Birthday Girl