Connor H

“Some moments in a life, and they needn’t be very long or seem very important, can make up for so much in that life; can redeem, justify, that pain, that bewilderment, with which one lives, and invest one with the courage not only to endure it, but to profit from it; some moments teach one the price of the human connection: if one can live with one’s own pain, then one respects the pain of others, and so, briefly, but transcendentally, we can release each other from pain.”
― James Baldwin, Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone

“Fiction, the time-honoured resource of the ill-at-ease, would have to come to her aid,”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

“There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“She was not aware of loneliness so much as of endeavour: her future career as a writer, of which there was as yet no sign, would, she thought, in time validate her entire existence. Until then she would adopt—had already adopted—a regime which would steel her against rejection and disappointment.”
― Anita Brookner, A Closed Eye