The biggest pain in the ass about hindsight is realizing how clueless you are, walking through life, bumping into everything, and always avoiding catastrophe by millimeters. Well, you don’t always avoid it. Sometimes it hits you dead on. Sometimes it hits you more than once.

You're Dying Up There by Somer Canon

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

― Friedrich Nietzsche

When you come to the edge of all that you know, you must believe one of two things: either there will be ground to stand on, or you will be given wings to fly.

The Summer King by O.R. Melling

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing. And gave it up. And took my old body and went out into the morning, and sang.

"I Worried" by Mary Oliver

It is hard to be old, but there's something liberating about old age, too, because finally you realize that you can claim your history in all its fullness, that you can give voice to your memory and speak it's truth, and that it is not a betrayal or an indiscretion to do so.

Two Rings: A Story of Love and War by Millie Werber and Eve Keller

…It becomes clear that I am not one and simple, but complex and many.

The Waves by Virginia Woolf

The goal we seek, and the good we hope for, comes not as some final reward but as the hidden companion to our quest.

Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War by Madeleine Albright

Each day means a new twenty-four hours. Each day means everything’s possible again. You live in the moment, you die in the moment, you take it all one day at a time.

Legend by Mary Lu

This hobble of being alive is rather serious, don’t you think so?

Tess of the D'urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

A flood of emotions rushes into me. Pain and anger. Sadness and pity. But most surprising of all, hope.

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men.

Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein

Spoiler, we die in the end.

— Atticus

An unguarded moment, stripped of artifice, when one forgets to fool even oneself.

The House at Riverton by Kate Morton

The universe is wider than our views of it.

Walden & Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau 

A lot of people buy into the slogan “Live life like there’s no tomorrow.” But I tend to disagree. Once you become aware of your impending death, you have to make a compromise in accepting the loss of the life you wish you could have led and the reality of your imminent death. Sure, there will always be regrets and broken dreams, but you have to go easy on yourself. Over the last few days, I’ve come to realize that there’s a certain beauty in those regrets. They’re proof of having lived.

If Cats Disappeared from the World by Genki Kawamura

Brutal to give the prisoner a window ― a blue sky glimpse ― as if an afterlife existed. Brutal for you to parade in a body in the same room where I dream you.

"Brutal" by Andrea Cohen