Saurabh Kadam

“Monelle found me in the plain where I was wandering and took me by the hand. “Do not be surprised,” she said. “It is I, and it is not I; “You shall find me again, and you shall lose me; “Once more shall I come among you; for few men have seen me, and none has understood me; “And you shall forget me, and you shall recognize me, and you shall forget me.”
― Marcel Schwob, The Book of Monelle

“In any case, there was only one tunnel, dark and lonely, mine, the tunnel in which I had spent my childhood, my youth, my whole life. And in one of those transparent lengths of the stone wall I had seen this girl and had gullibly believed that she was traveling another tunnel parallel to mine, when in reality she belonged to the broad world, to the world without confines of those who do not live in tunnels; and perhaps she had peeped into one of my strange windows out of curiosity and had caught a glimpse of my doomed loneliness, or her fancy had been intrigued by the mute language, the clue of my painting.
And then, while I advanced always along my corridor, she lived her normal life outside, the exciting life of those people who live outside, that strange, absurd life in which there are dances and parties and gaiety and frivolity. And it happened at times that when I walked by one of my windows she was waiting for me, silent and longing (why was she waiting for me? why silent and longing?); but other times she did not get there on time, or she forgot about this poor creature hemmed in, and then I, with my face pressed against the glass wall, could see her in the distance, smiling or dancing carefree, or, what was worse, I could not see her at all and I imagined her in inaccessible or vile places. And then I felt my destiny a far lonelier one than I had imagined.”
― Ernesto Sabato, El túnel

“In China, any idea that dared to take flight would only crash back to the ground. The gravity of reality is too strong.”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem

“The difference between a normal person and an insane one is precisely that the normal person has all the diseases of the mind, while the madman has only one!”
― Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities