Sam (not.a.sidekick)

“Shane seemed very excited about the burgers. He had followed a recipe online. Ilya took a sip of his beer. "Why the fuck are you making eight burgers?" he asked. "That's how many the recipe was for!"
"You can't do math? Cut it in half?"
"Leave me alone." Instead, Ilya stood directly behind Shane and draped an arm across his chest. He kissed him behind the ear. "No", he murmured.”
― Rachel Reid, Heated Rivalry

“You stop, and you turn back into stars. Mum says everyone’s made of stars. Is that true?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, and liked Anna even more than before. ‘All matter is forged by nuclear fusion reactions in the hearts of stars. They take hydrogen atoms, which are the littlest bits of the stuff the world is made of, and they bolt them together into bigger and bigger atoms – helium, oxygen, carbon, everything. All the atoms that make you. You’re star dust.’ She looked pleased with that. ‘And then when my atoms have finished being me, they go off back to the stars?’ ‘Some of them will be rain, some will be earth, some will float away and light up when the solar wind comes, and that makes the aurora. And like you say, some of them will find their way back into a star.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Half Life of Valery K

“What's gone before you, and what will come after,' I said instead.
'Beg pardon?'
'The past ahead. Time is like a river and you float with the current. Your ancestors set off before you did, so they're far ahead. Your descendants will sail it after.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Bedlam Stacks

“Being mad isn't an excuse for being vague. Can we at least have specific madness?”
― Natasha Pulley, The Bedlam Stacks