Ruby

“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.

And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.

And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Don't feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Grief is subversive, undermining the quiet agreement to behave and be in control of our emotions. It is an act of protest that declares our refusal to live numb and small. There is something feral about grief, something essentially outside the ordained and sanctioned behaviors of our culture. Because of that, grief is necessary to the vitality of the soul. Contrary to our fears, grief is suffused with life-force.... It is not a state of deadness or emotional flatness. Grief is alive, wild, untamed and cannot be domesticated. It resists the demands to remain passive and still. We move in jangled, unsettled, and riotous ways when grief takes hold of us. It is truly an emotion that rises from the soul.”
― Francis Weller

“You have to have faith in the future and the unknown, in the tomorrows and somedays that will line up in ways that you can’t possibly imagine from where you’re standing now. You have to have faith in yourself, faith that you will get yourself to where you want to go, even if you’re not entirely certain where that is yet. Faith that your future self will figure it out. Faith that you are going to fight for yourself as determinedly and as passionately as you deserve to be fought for, no matter where you’re headed next. You have to remember every dreary day that preceded some of the best days of your life, and realise that this is where you are right now: in the middle of that rainy day when it seems like everything is going wrong. You weren’t at the end of the story back then, and you’re not at the end of the story now.”
― Heidi Priebe, This Is Me Letting You Go