"'Ela', tentava Swann perguntar o que era; pois há uma semelhança entre o amor e a morte, mais do que essas tão vagas que se repetem sempre: a de fazer-nos interrogar mais fundo, no medo de que nos fuja a sua essência, o mistério da personalidade. E aquela doença que era o amor de Swann de tal modo se multiplicara, estava tão estreitamente ligada a todos os hábitos de Swann, a todos os seus atos, a seu pensamento, a sua saúde, a seu sono, a sua vida, até ao que ele desejava após a morte, era de tal sorte um só todo com ele, que não lho poderiam arrancar sem o destruir quase por completo: como se diz em cirurgia, o seu amor não era mais operável."

Marcel Proust, Em busca do tempo perdido, No caminho de Swann.

.

"But I was wrong. She wasn't the kind of child who could stand proper training. There just happen to be people like that. They're blessed with this marvellous talent, but they can't make the effort to systematize it. They end up squandering it in little bits and pieces. At first you think they're amazing. They can sight-read some terrifically difficult piece and do a damn good job playing it all the way through. You see them do it, and you're overwhelmed. You think, 'I could never do that in a million years". But that's as far as it goes. They can't take it any further. And why not? Because they won't put in the effort. They haven't had the discipline pounded into them. They've been spoiled. They have just enough talent so they've been able to do things well without any effort and they've had people telling them how great they are from an early age, so hard work looks stupid to them. They'll take some piece another kid has to work on for three weeks and polish it off in half the time, so the teacher assumes they've put enough into it and lets them go on to the next piece. And they do that in half the time and then go on to the next piece. They never find out what it means to be hammered by the teacher; they lose out on a crucial element required for character building. It's a tragedy."

Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood.

There is nothing left of me here.