Iva

“When I start to feel emotional about something, I can't tell if I'm actually feeling that way. What if it's just something somebody wrote in a book? Or maybe a line or a performance from some movie... Either way, I get this feeling like I'm quoting somebody else's work.”
― Mieko Kawakami, All the Lovers in the Night

“People are strange, Jun. They know nothing lasts forever, but still find time to laugh and cry and get upset, laboring over things and breaking things apart.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Breasts and Eggs

“Time passes, people leave, we become alone again. If we don't accept that fact, memory erodes the present and exhausts the mind until it ages us and ails us.”
― Choi Eunyoung, Shoko's Smile: Stories

“I won’t say we human beings still don’t have much to learn. Sometimes we love and hate without thought. We expect too much from one another, and often we are wrong. Take that flower,” he said, pointing to the crepe myrtle. “It has a short life span, but you know just what to expect of it. The leaves are turning yellow-orange, so you know within a week they’ll fall. Fortunately—or unfortunately—we human beings have much longer lives. And that makes for many more complications. But in the end, Stephen-san, you can only look back, hoping everything that happens in your life is for a purpose.”
― Gail Tsukiyama, The Samurai's Garden