I need it to rain, heavily. I seriously need it

— Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice

I live in two worlds. One is the world of books. The other is the world in my head.

“Tortured poets department?” Back in my day it was dead poets society

Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times? As if something were left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells... and then, when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there too.. a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed flower... both strange and familiar.

- Cornelia Funke, The Inkheart

"Do you understand? When I am done telling you these stories, when you're done listening to these stories, I am no longer I, and you are no longer you. In this afternoon we briefly merged into one. After this, you will always carry a bit of me, and I will always carry a bit of you, even if we both forget this conversation."

– Hao Jingfang, "Invisible Planets," in Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation, tr. & ed. Ken Liu

James Baldwin.

My face will always say it before I do

"Days will pass, and you'll abandon things you were addicted to, and leave someone, and cancel a dream, and finally, accept a reality."

– Nizar Qabbani

Ignoring me is the most effective way to never hear from me again

Sappho, from If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho; tr. by Anne Carson

— August 16, 1912 / Franz Kafka diaries

in case no one told you today: you deserve way more than the bare minimum in all types of relationships.