The misery of other people is only an abstraction something that can be sympathized with only by drawing from one's own experiences. But as it stands, true empathy remains impossible. And so long as it is, people will continue to suffer the pressure of their seemingly singular existence.

And so he did the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life: he picked up his hat and walked away.

The moment had passed, the door between the lives we could have led and the lives we led had shut in our faces.

Even now, all possible feelings do not yet exist, there are still those that lie beyond our capacity and our imagination. From time to time, when a piece of music no one has ever written or a painting no one has ever painted, or something else impossible to predict, fathom or yet describe takes place, a new feeling enters the world. And then, for the millionth time in the history of feeling, the heart surges and absorbs the impact.

I do realize that the reader needs some form of resolution. Sometimes I think of it almost like writing a musical score where things have to harmonize and certain lines have to come to a close.

When the word 'nostalgia' was coined in the 18th century, it was used to describe a pathology - not so much a sense of lost time, but a severe homesickness.

the shop owner did not try to push the book on any of her customers. She knew that in the wrong hands such a book could easily be dismissed, or, worse, go unread. Instead she let it sit where it was in the hope that the right reader might discover it.