Taylor Pumphrey

“It’s what we’ve always done. Left a mark on a cave, or on a page. Showing who we are, sharing our view of the world, the life we’re made to bear. Our turmoil is revealed in those painted faces – sometimes tenderly, sometimes grotesquely, but art becomes a mirror. All the symbolism and the paradox, ours to interpret. That’s how it becomes part of us.”
― Sarah Winman, Still Life

“But the thing is, we’re all like that. Nobody wakes up when they want to. Nobody did all of their reading (except maybe the crazy people who win the prizes . . .). We have these impossibly high standards and we’ll probably never live up to our perfect fantasies of our future selves. But I feel like that’s okay.”
― Marina Keegan, The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories

“And for two hours the wine was poured, the cheese cut, and the two men talked. Of what? Who knows? Of love, of war, of the past. And they listened with hearts instead of ears, and in the candle-lit kitchen three floors up in an old palazzo, death was put on hold.”
― Sarah Winman, Still Life

“Everything will be destroyed no matter how hard we work to create it. The idea terrifies me. I want tiny permanents. I want gigantic permanents! I want what I think and who I am captured in an anthology of indulgence I can comfortingly tuck into a shelf in some labyrinthine library.”
― Marina Keegan, The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories