“Hey,” said the sheep man. “What is it?” “You forgot the shoes, didn’t you?” “Yes, I’ve forgotten them,” I replied. Thanks to his question, however, the shoes that I had managed to forget walked right back into my mind.

Haruki Murakami, The Strange Library

Consider also:

  1. To all the monsters hiding in this world, I hope the children will skin you alive. To the children in the world, let no one say you can’t make your monsters bleed.
  2. “Knowing who you are—and who you are not—is essential. But it is only a starting point. All the talent, motivation, and hard work in the world will not be valued or remembered if it does not help another human being.”
  3. You and I have both known him, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say it’s an experience we shan’t ever forget. And even when he and I met in the middle of China, with his mind a blank and his past a mystery, there was still that queer core of attractiveness in him.
  4. “The dense black clouds were driving restlessly athwart the sky; and when the vivid lightning gleamed forth with rapid and eccentric glare, it seemed as if the dark jaws of some hideous monster, floating high above, opened to vomit flame. And as the abrupt but furious gusts of wind swept through the forest, they raised strange echoes—as if the impervious mazes of that mighty wood were the abode of hideous fiends and evil spirits, who responded in shrieks, moans, and lamentations to the fearful din of the tempest.”
  5. Riches she possessed, but that which enriches them, the participation of affection, was wanting. All that they could purchase for her became indifferent to her, because that which they could not purchase, and which was more valuable than themselves, she had, for their sake, thrown away. She discovered, when it was too late, that she had mistaken the means for the end—that riches, rightly used, are instruments of happiness, but are not in themselves happiness.