"عليكِ النهوض، حتى وإن توسل لكِ قلبك للبقاء بالأسفل."

-ألفا هولدن

"If you remember me, then I don't care if everyone else forgets."

-Haruki Murakami, Kafka On the Shore

"You sit at the edge of the world
I'm in a crater that's no more
Words without letters glaring at the shore
Standing at the shadow of the door
The moon shines down on a sleeping lizard
Little fish rain down from the sky
Outside the window there are soldiers
Stealing themselves to die
Kafka sits in a chair by the shore
Thinking of the pendulum that moves the world
When your heart is closed
The shadow of the unmoving sphinx becomes a knife
That pierces your dreams
The drowning girl's fingers
Search for the entrance stone and more
Lifting the hem of her azure dress
She gazes at Kafka on the shore
Kafka sits in a chair by the shore
Thinking of the pendulum that moves the world
When your heart is closed
The shadow of the unmoving sphinx becomes a knife
That pierces your dreams."

-Haruki Murakami, Kafka On the Shore

"But I will write in spite of everything, absolutely;
It is my struggle for self-preservation."

-Franz Kafka

"I want to give you something, or I want to take
something from you. But I want to feel the exchange,
the warm hand on the shoulder, the song coming out
and the ear holding on to it. Maybe we could meet
at that table under the tree, just right out there.
I’m passing the idea to you in this note:
the table, the tree, the pure heat of late July.
We could be in that same safe place watching
the sugar maple throw down its winged seeds
like the tree wants to give us something too—
some sweet goodness that’s so hard to take."

-Ada Limón

"there’s the silence that comes back, a million times bigger than me, sneaks into my bones and wails and wails and wails until I can’t be quiet anymore. That’s how this machine works."

-Ada Limón

"The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary. Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls."

-Sylvia Plath

*Sarah Ruhl - Eurydice
*Hemingway - A Farewell to Arms

"When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be."

-The Beatles, let it be

"I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be."

-Charles Dickens

"I swear, I’ll try harder not to
miss as much: the tree, or how
your fingers under still
sleep-stunned sheets
coaxed all my colors back."

-Ada Limón, Bright Dead Things

"And my dear memories are heavier than rocks."

-Charles Baudelaire

"Perhaps then, some day in the far future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way to the answer."

-Rilke

-Paul Bowles, The Time of Friendship

"Autumn is cruel to nature. And with beauty, she tries to woo us away from her destruction. I pray to not be like her."

-Aleena Rose

"and I think of that walk in my valley where
J said, You don’t believe in God? And I said,
No. I believe in this connection we all have
to nature, to each other, to the universe.
And she said, Yeah, God."

-Ada Limón

"I cut from the bone and still the bone
remembers, still it wants (so much, it wants)"

-Ada Limón

"A dream of loveliness, isn't she?"

-Henrik Ibsen

"You knew it would hurt her?
 
Yes and I knew there would be bodies.
Yes and I knew that I’d lose her forever.
Yes and I chose that and I chose to lose her."

-Ada Limón

"I've spent years trying to forget, but the memories always find me. Your face, your voice, the way you looked at me when I thought I understood you. They always found me, no matter how much time has passed"

-Fallen Echoes