“From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood.“
“Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness.
Everything passes.
That is the one and only thing that I have thought resembled a truth in the society of human beings where I have dwelled up to now as in a burning hell.
Everything passes.”
— Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human
“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
“The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude.”
— Kate Chopin, The Awakening