Alan

“Esti now discovered for the first time what intellectually fertile soil a railway compartment is. Here the lives of strangers appear before us in, as it were, cross section — suddenly and condensed — as in a novel opened haphazardly in the middle. Our curiosity, which otherwise we conceal by false modesty, can be satisfied under the constraint of our being enclosed together in a moving room, and we can peep into those lives and speculate on what the beginning of the novel must have been and how it will end.”
― Dezső Kosztolányi, Kornél Esti

“What a shame that those moments when man is noble and pure and akin to the angels are so transient, so fleeting, while that complicated nonentity the Ego is always with us - of which one can speak only in terms of protective tenderness and gentle irony.”
― Antal Szerb

“Life is so uncertain: you never know what could happen. One way to deal with that is to keep your pajamas washed.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“A woman fallen has no future; a man risen has no past.”
― Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries