"Politeness. Now, there's a poor man's virtue if ever there was one. What's so admirable about inoffensiveness, I should like to know. After all, it's easily achieved. One needs no particular talent to be polite. On the contrary, being nice is what's left when you've failed at everything else. People with ambition don't give a damn what other people think about them. I hardly suppose Wagner lost sleep worrying about whether he'd hurt someone's feelings. But then he was a genius."
--Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

sunbeams

"You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who have ever been alive."
--James Baldwin
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"If you're really listening, if you're awake to the poignant beauty of the world, your heart breaks regularly."
--Andrew Harvey