Shalanda Riehm

“The very impulse to write springs from an inner chaos crying for order - for meaning.”
― Arthur MIller

“In the language of the day it is customary to describe a certain sort of book as “escapist” literature. As I understand it, the adjective implies, a little condescendingly, that the life therein depicted cannot be identified with the real life which the critic knows so well in W.C.1: and may even have the disastrous effect on the reader of taking him happily for a few hours out of his own real life in N.W.8. Why this should be a matter for regret I do not know; nor why realism in a novel is so much admired when realism in a picture is condemned as mere photography; nor, I might add, why drink and fornication should seem to bring the realist closer to real life than, say, golf and gardening.”
― A.A. Milne

“Guests began drifting toward the edge of the lawn.
Jane heard the shift around her as someone whispered,
“Graham’s here.”
― D.L. Maddox, Secrets

“Alisha was now sitting in a shabby armchair with her face buried in a tissue. ‘It’s when someone is kind,’ she whispered, ‘You can keep going until someone is kind.”
― Elizabeth Tebby Germaine, A MAN WHO SEEMED REAL: A story of love, lies, fear and kindness