Michael

“Left to itself every literature will exhaust its vitality, if it is not refreshed by the interest and contributions of a foreign one. What naturalist does not take pleasure in the wonderful things that he sees produced by reflection in a mirror? Now what a mirror in the field of ideas and morals means, everyone has experienced in himself, and once his attention is aroused, he will understand how much of his education he owes to it.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Today, no one has time for feelings, they’re all out making money. The discovery of money hit us like an atom bomb…”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

“Wherever you turn, you run up against your childhood and hurt yourself because it’s sharp-edged and hard, and stops only when it has torn you completely apart. It seems that everyone has their own and each is totally different. My brother’s childhood is very noisy, for example, while mine is quiet and furtive and watchful. No one likes it and no one has any use for it.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, Childhood

“Hell is other people, said Jean-Paul Sartre. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think he means you.”
― Andy Miller, The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life