“[…] she was feeling something new here. Or something old that she had long buried. [It] reminded her that she was, first and foremost, a human living on a planet. Almost everything she had done in her life […] – almost everything she had bought and worked for and consumed – had taken her further away from understanding that she and all humans were really just one of nine million species.” Midnight Library

“My father used to say that one of the great offences of sham politeness was the neglect of promises. When anything is demanded of you that you cannot do, refuse positively and leave no loopholes for false hopes; on the other hand, grant at once whatever you are willing to bestow.” The Lily Of The Valley

“If I had found the food I liked, believe me, I should have made no fuss and stuffed myself like you or anyone else.” These were his last words, but in his dimming eyes there remained the firm though no longer proud persuasion that he was still continuing to fast.”  A Hunger Artist

The life which is implicated with fortune (depends on fortune) is like a winter torrent: for it is turbulent, and full of mud, and difficult to cross, and tyrannical, and noisy, and of short duration. Fragment