from Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer.

"She was a genius of sadness, immersing herself in it, separating its numerous strands appreciating its subtle nuances. She was a prism through which sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum."

"Brod discovered 612 sadnesses, each perfectly unique, each a singular emotion, no more similar to any other sadness than to anger, ecstasy, guilt, or frustration. Mirror Sadness. Sadness of Domesticated Birds. Sadness of Being Sad in Front of One's Parent. Humor Sadness. Sadness of Love Without Release."

"She had to satisfy herself with the idea of love- loving the loving of things whose existence she didn't care at all about. Love itself became the object of her love. She loved herself in love, she loved loving love, as love loves loving, and was able, in that way, to reconcile herself with a world that fell so short of what she had hoped for. It was not the world that was the great and saving lie, but her willingness to make it beautiful and fair, to live a once-removed life, in a world once-removed from the one in which everyone else seemed to exist."

"Love me, because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything that does."

"From space, astronauts can see people making love as a tiny speck of light. Not light, exactly, but a glow that could be mistaken for light- a coital radiance that takes generations to pour like honey through the darkness to the astronaut's eyes."

" Say it again.

I won't leave you alone.

Say it again.

I won't leave you alone.

Again.

I won't.

Won't what?

Leave you alone."

"It was the part when you said that you do not know anybody, and how that encompasses even you. I understand very much what you are saying."

"I can be a melancholy person in manners that are interesting, not only melancholy. With writing, we have second chances."

"There has yet to be a human to survive a span of history without at least one end of the world. It is the subject of extensive scholarly debate whether stillborn babies are subject to the same revelations- if we could say that they have lived without endings. This debate, of course, demands a close examination of that more profound question: Was the world first created or ended? When the Lord our God breathed on the universe, was that a genesis or a revelation? Should we count those seven days forward of backward? How did the apple taste, Adam? And the half a worm you discovered in that sweet and bitter pulp: was that the head or the tail?"

I want to drive my car out into the ocean and fall off the edge of the continent. I want to confront the emptiness and give myself up to it. Do you know that moment when you wake from sleep? That moment when you can't move or breathe or talk or blink. Something hasn't clicked right, your body doesn't respond to your brain and you worry that you will die without air. Panicked, you wonder if someone will save you while you feel consciousness slip away. But then acceptance comes. You don't think about Death, about what Death means. You just feel an overwhelming calmness. You think, Yes, I will die. I don't feel too concerned about it. Then something connects, and you breath in a mouthful of oxygen. And the calm evaporates.

I want it back, I want it back. I want to let go.

It hurts so much to love in this world.