* "Blindness" by Jorge Luis Borges
"He said that when something ends, we must think that something begins. His advice is salutory, but the execution is difficult, for we only know what we have lost, not what we will gain. We have a very precise image--an image at times shameless--of what we have lost, but we are ignorant of what may follow or replace it."

"A writer, or any man, must believe that whatever happens to him is an instrument; everything has been given for an end ... Everything that happens, including humiliations, embarrassments, misfortunes, all has been given like clay, like material for one's art. One must accept it ... Those things are given to us to transform, so that we may make from the miserable circumstances of our lives things that are eternal, or aspire to be so."



*
Vivir quiero conmigo
gozar quiero del bien que debo al cielo
a solas sin testigo
libre de amor, de celo,
de odio, de esperanza, de recelo.

-Fray Luis de Leon



*
Alles Nahe werde fern ("everything near becomes distant")
-Johann Wolfgang van Goethe




*"Some Thoughts on Mercy" by Ross Gay
"It is said, and I believe it, that bees can see inside you. And yet, and yet, the bees didn't attack. Not one sting. They didn't even warn me by coming toward my face. They didn't believe what I thought--what I had imagined--was real. They knew inside me was a truth other than murder. They had mercy. And once the hive was all cloesd up, they went back to their business."