We like the part where we get saved.
We like the part where we get destroyed.
Why do those feel so similar?
Margaret Atwood, Dearly: New Poems
Life offers up these moments of joy despite everything.
Sally Rooney, Normal People
Marianne had the sense that her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her, and she didn't know if she would ever find out where it was or become part of it.
Sally Rooney, Normal People
She closes her eyes. He probably won’t come back, she thinks. Or he will, differently. What they have now they can never have back again. But for her the pain of loneliness will be nothing to the pain that she used to feel, of being unworthy. He brought her goodness like a gift and now it belongs to her. Meanwhile his life opens out before him in all directions at once. They’ve done a lot of good for each other. Really, she thinks, really. People can really change one another.
You should go, she says. I’ll always be here. You know that.
Sally Rooney, Normal People
In everybody's life there's a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can't go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That's how we survive.
Haruki Murakami, Kafka on The Shore
"I happen to like the strange ones," the driver said. "People who look normal and live a normal life -- they're the ones you have to watch out for"
Haruki Murakami, Kafka on The Shore
With each new dawn it's not the same world as the day before. And you're not the same person you were, either.
Haruki Murakami, Kafka on The Shore
The truth was I was tired way underneath my skin. I was tired where even I couldn't see. I do not know how that happened. How I ended up like that. It all happened so fast.
Rebecca Wells, The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I'm one of them.
Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
Stuff your eyes with wonder, he said, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
I feel it, I feel my thin morals dissolving. I feel my flimsy, moth-eaten skin of humanity begin to come apart, and with it, the veil keeping me from complete darkness. There are no lines I won't cross. No illusions of mercy.
I wanted to be better for her. For her happiness. For her future.
But if she's gone, what good is goodness?
Tahereh Mafi, Defy Me
I love you, Ella. I will love you for the rest of my life. My heart is yours. Please don't ever give it back to me.
Tahereh Mafi, Defy Me
It's not insane to imagine that sometimes even horrible people are searching for a way out of their own darkness.
Tahereh Mafi, Defy Me
I think you still love me, but we can’t escape the fact that I’m not enough for you. I knew this was going to happen. So I’m not blaming you for falling in love with another woman. I’m not angry, either. I should be, but I’m not. I just feel pain. A lot of pain. I thought I could imagine how much this would hurt, but I was wrong.
Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun
He looked him right in the eyes and saw a man who was great and good and human, who had done extraordinary things and terrible things and been broken and reassembled as a shell, only then to do the bravest thing of all: He had kept on living, though there are easier paths to take.
Laini Taylor, Strange the Dreamer
In a perfect world everything would be either black or white, right or wrong, and everyone would know the difference. But this isn't a perfect world. The problem is people who think it is.
Neal Shusterman, Unwind
And that's how you go on. You lay laughter over the dark parts. The more dark parts, the more you have to laugh. With defiance, with abandon, with hysteria, any way you can.
Laini Taylor, Strange the Dreamer