Khaled Hosseini
I now know that some people feel unhappiness the way others love: privately, intensely, and without recourse. — Khaled Hosseini, And The Mountains Echoed (Riverhead Books; First Edition edition, May 21, 2013)
Category: Historical Fiction
Joseph Conrad
Droll thing life is—that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself—that comes too late—a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable grayness, with nothing… Continue reading Joseph Conrad
Meg Rosoff
Nevertheless, I can tell you that you will awake someday to find that your life has rushed by at a speed at once impossible and cruel. The most intense moments will seem to have occurred only yesterday and nothing will have erased the pain and pleasure, the impossible intensity of love and its dog-leaping happiness,… Continue reading Meg Rosoff
Alessandro Baricco
It pained him to hear Hervé Joncour softly saying, in conclusion: “I have never even heard her voice.” And a while later: “It is a strange sort of pain.” Softly. “To die of yearning for something you’ll never experience.” — Alessandro Baricco, Silk. Published by Rizzoli (editore.) Published in English (1996.)
Charles Dickens
And then I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and see no help or pitty in all the glittering multitude. ― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations. (Chapman & Hall; Serialized 1860-1; book form 1861)
Jonathan Safran Foer
…is ignorance bliss, I don’t know, but it’s so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I’ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it. ― Jonathan Safran Foer,… Continue reading Jonathan Safran Foer
Lawrence Durrel
There are only three things to be done with a woman. You can love her, suffer for her, or turn her into literature. ― Lawrence Durrell, Justine. (Penguin; Reprint edition, July 12, 1991) Originally published 1957.
