Isabel

“Yes, sometimes it’s the strangers that sustain you.”
― Zadie Smith, Swing Time

“No one is more ingenious than the poor, wherever you find them. When you are poor every stage has to be thought through. Wealth is the opposite. With wealth you get to be thoughtless.” “I”
― Zadie Smith, Swing Time

“He licked his lips. ‘Well, if you want my opinion-‘
‘I don’t, ‘ She said. ‘I have my own.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“I'm going to tell you something important. Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they always know what they're doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. The truth is, there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.'
...
We sat there, side by side, on the old wooden bench, not saying anything. I thought about adults. I wondered if that was true: if they were all really children wrapped in adult bodies, like children books hidden in the middle of dull, long books. The kind with no pictures or conversations.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane