“I Have Grown To Love Secrecy. It Seems To Be The One Thing That Can Make Modern Life Mysterious Or

“People usually fail when they are on the verge of success. So give as much care to the end as to the beginning; then there will be no failure.”

— Laozi, Daodejing, Feng & English tr. (Ch 64)

“When we’re most intense—who’ll flinch?”

— Arthur Rimbaud, from Selected Poems & Prose; “Phrases,”

Clarice Lispector, tr. by Johnny Lorenz, Um Sopro de Vida

“Elle s'éveillait comme d'un songe, elle naissait à la passion.”

— Émile Zola, Thérèse Raquin

Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“I can’t think of a better way to revenge someone who tried to break you, than to live and love life more without them.”

— Innocent Mwatsikesimbe 

— Vladimir Nabokov, Letters to Vera

Franz Kafka, from “Diaries, 1910-1923”

She naturally loved solitary places, vast views, and to feel herself for ever and ever and ever alone.

Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography

Gabriela Mistral, tr. by Langston Hughes, from Selected Poems; “Quietness,”