Ben

“What is it to be seen in the right way? As who you are? A flash of color, a blur in the crowd, something spectacular but untouchable.”
― Ada Limon, The Hurting Kind: Poems

“Men and women make sad mistakes about their own symptoms, taking their vague, uneasy longings sometimes for genius, sometimes for religion, and oftener still for a mighty love.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“Could you refuse me if I asked you to point again at the horizon, to tell me something was worth waiting for?”
― Ada Limon, The Hurting Kind: Poems

“But on the whole the impression was neither of tragedy nor of comedy. There was no describing it. It was manifold and various; there were tears and laughter, happiness and woe; it was tedious and interesting and indifferent; it was as you saw it: it was tumultuous and passionate; it was grave; it was sad and comic; it was trivial; it was simple and complex; joy was there and despair; the love of mothers for their children, and of men for women; lust trailed itself through the rooms with leaden feet, punishing the guilty and the innocent, helpless wives and wretched children; drink seized men and women and cost its inevitable price; death sighed in these rooms; and the beginning of life, filling some poor girl with terror and shame, was diagnosed there. There was neither good nor bad there. There were just facts. It was life.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage