Nate Ewart

“It's hard to care about people. Exhausting, in fact, because empathy is a complicated thing. It requires us to accept that everyone else's lives are also going on the whole time. We have no pause button for when everything gets too much for us to deal with, but then neither does anyone else.”
― Fredrick Backman, Us Against You

“He said you don't have to lead by telling other people what to do, you can lead by just letting them do what they're capable of instead. So I tried to be a teacher more than a boss.”
― Fredrick Backman, Anxious People

“Break the chains, my love.”
― Pierce Brown, Red Rising

“Then as he had kept watch Sam had noticed that at times a light seemed to be shining faintly within; but now the light was even clearer and stronger. Frodo's face was peaceful, the marks of fear and care had left it; but it looked old, old and beautiful, as if the chiseling of the shaping years was now revealed in many fine lines that had before been hidden, though the identity of the face was not changed. Not that Sam Gamgee put it that way to himself. He shook his head, as if finding words useless, and murmured: "I love him. He's like that, and sometimes it shines through, somehow. But I love him, whether or no.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers