Joey

“We’ll imprison one another. We’ll get used to it. We’ll turn into moles, into bats, into scorpions.”
“We won’t even get out. We’ll come to love the silence and the darkness.”
“We won’t get out. We’ll stay here forever. We can’t live without eternity.”
“We won’t forget one another.”
“We’ll imprison our adversaries up above; we’ll banish them to the earth. And we’ll forget about them.”
“‘When they’re pulled from hell, they’ll be thrown into the river of life.’”
“They’ll be unhappy up above. They’ll cry: ‘Give us a little darkness. We were together with you!”’
“And we’ll say to them: ‘Find darkness for yourself. Create it yourself!”’
“How unhappy they’ll be! They’ll cry: ‘Release us! Let us come down below!’ And we’ll say to them: ‘That’s your own fault. You didn’t believe us.’”
“That’s your own fault. Remain up above.”
“Occasionally I’ll go up to the earth.”
“You always rebel.”
“You’ll be a mole-dervish. You’ll make sure that we never begin to see, that we never wander out of our dark world”
― Meša Selimović, Death and the Dervish

“Little-boy love...the cleanest pain I've ever known. Love without desire, conditions, or limits - a pure and radiant glow in the heart that could make me giddy and sad and glorious all at once. Where does it go? Why, in all their experiments, did the Magi never try to capture that purity in a bottle? Perhaps they couldn't.”
― Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal

“He wanted to know her. Intimate secrets: Why poetry? Why so sad? Why that grayness in her eyes? Why so alone? Not lonely, just alone—riding her bike across campus or sitting off by herself in the cafeteria—even dancing, she danced alone—and it was the aloneness that filled him with love”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“Loving someone is like moving into a house," Sonja used to say. "At first you fall in love with all the new things, amazed every morning that all this belongs to you, as if fearing that someone would suddenly come rushing in through the door to explain that a terrible mistake had been made, you weren't actually supposed to live in a wonderful place like this. Then over the years the walls become weathered, the wood splinters here and there, and you start to love that house not so much because of all its perfection, but rather for its imperfections. You get to know all the nooks and crannies. How to avoid getting the key caught in the lock when it's cold outside. Which of the floorboards flex slightly when one steps on them or exactly how to open the wardrobe doors without them creaking. These are the little secrets that make it your home.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove