There is no secret of life. Life’s aim, if it has one, is simply to be always looking for temptations. There are not nearly enough. I sometimes pass a whole day without coming across a single one. It is quite dreadful. It makes one so nervous about the future. Oscar Wilde, A woman of no importance

When one has lived so much for others it is quite hard to turn oneself back again — to live for oneself. Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

Kyiv spelled in mosaics.

All the time you're saying to yourself: “I could do that, but I won't”, which is just another way of saying that you can't. Richard P. Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

Sometimes reality isn’t a bad place to be.

The more he studied, the more vistas he caught of fields of knowledge yet unexplored, and the regret that days were only twenty-four hours long became a chronic complaint with him. Jack London, Martin Eden

When I was first reading Remarque as a teen, I wondered how people could go eat oysters and have drinks amidst a war. As it turned out later in life, people can do a lot of things with a war around, as long as they still can have them.

I am not in favor of imposing happiness on people. Everyone has a right to his bad wine, to his stupidity, and to his dirty fingernails. Milan Kundera, Farewell Waltz

I want everything to be beautiful and nothing to hurt

How could I long so for someone whose existence I’d only just become aware of? But wasn’t it always like this? Some things we never know we need until we find them. Sabahattin Ali, Madonna in a fur coat

It was said that he had once been for a short time in Bedlam; they had done him the honour to take him for a madman,but had set him free on discovering that he was only a poet. Victor Hugo, The man who laughs

Sometimes I get so immersed in my own company, if I unexpectedly run into someone I know, it's a bit of a shock and takes me a while to adjust. Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

How can you keep up with her, this woman who is always reading another book besides the one before her eyes, a book that does not yet exist, but which, since she wants it, cannot fail to exist? Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

Dearest, I beg of you, sleep properly and go for walks. Remain calm, calm. Franz Kafka, 1912.