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Book cover of When Haru Was Here by Dustin Thao

It’s strange how people can come into your life and disappear from it. It makes you wonder if they were ever really there.

When Haru Was Here, Dustin Thao
Book cover of When Bad Things Happen to Good Prople by Harold S. Kushner

Living with the knowledge that we will die may be frightening and tragic, but knowing we will never die would be unbearable. We might wish for a longer life, or a happier one, but how could any of us endure a life that went on forever?

When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Harold S. Kushner
Book cover of White Night by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Such fondness at certain moments makes the heart cold and the soul heavy. Your hand is cold, mine burns like fire. How blind you are, Nastenka!…Oh, how unbearable a happy person is sometimes.

White Nights, Fyodor Dostoevsky
Book cover of Keep it in the Family by John Marrs

People talk about how they’d do things differently if they could go back to a time of their choosing […] But I’m not sure I could do any better the second time around. We are who we are destined to be. No matter what decision I made or path I took. I’d have ended up here in this moment.

Keep it in the Family, John Marrs
Book cover of All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami

When lying in bed started to bother me, I got up without actually getting dressed and sat down in my chair, gazing out the window as I wondered what had brought about this awful state of mind. Why did I have to feel so awful all the time? How had I let things get so bad that I was unable to do work or anything else? What was going on?

All the Lovers in the Night, Mieko Kawakami

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