"Suddenly, it seemed to me that the entire world was like a palace with countless rooms whose doors opened into one another. We were able to pass from one room to the next only by exercising our memories and imaginations, but most of us, in our laziness, rarely exercised these capacities, and forever remained in the same room." My Name is Red, pg. 496

"I understand Tamina's self-reproaches. When Papa died, I did the same. I could not forgive myself for asking him so little, for knowing so little about him, for allowing myself to lack him...
A symphony is a musical epic. We might say that it is like a voyage leading from one thing to another, farther and farther away through the infinitude of the exterior world. Variations are also like a voyage. But that voyage does not lead through the infinitude of the exterior world. In one of his pensées, Pascal says that man lives between the abyss of the infinitely large and the abyss of the infinitely small. The voyage of variations leads into that other infinitude, into the infinite diversity of the interior world lying hidden in all things.
...
That the infinitude of the exterior world escapes us we accept as natural. But we reproach ourselves until the end of our lives for lacking that other infinitude. We ponder the infinitude of the stars but are unconcerned about the infinitude our papa has within him.
It is not surprising that in his later years variations became the favorite form for Beethoven, who knew all too well (as Tamina and I know) that there is nothing more unbearable than lacking the being we loved, those sixteen measures and the interior world of their infinitude of possibilities." pg. 225-227.
"Memories are scattered all over the immense world, and it takes voyaging to find them and make them leave their refuge!" pg. 229, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

800 words

For a talent contest I'm supposed to write 800 words to describe a person who is important to me. It's the hardest thing I've tried to write so far. Upfront I decided not to write about someone in my family, it's just too difficult to share someone dear to me with strangers. Maybe it's too difficult to analyze a person who's dear to me and confront what I find out. Then I tried writing about someone semi-important to me. But I don't know him that well, and I pictured him getting so angry that I'm describing him to people. I realized I don't know him that well, anyway. Then finally I asked my mom and she suggested a person. (First she suggested I should write about a friend whom I love, I get angry at, and I decide to love again in the end... I told her it happens with all my friends, but sometimes I remain in the "angry" phase.) I will try to write about him. But not only him. I will try to write 800 words about everyone who's important to me. I will think about people, how they are.

Tonight my parents and I watched Ferzan Özpetek's Saturno Contro. It reminded me there are two things that matter in life: The love you feel towards people you shared something with, whatever that is. The people whom you're comfortable around. And the loss of those people. There are no rules when it comes to those things. It's not black and white, it's not pure or simple. So now I will write about a friend who taught me that.