Robin

“But none of us are able to really see the world we are living in—this world, occupying as it does the contradiction between its banality (the squat wall of the Detention Center, the bus running along its ordinary route) and its extremity (the cell and the man inside the cell), is something that we see only briefly and then do not see again for a long time, if ever. It is surprisingly easy to forget what you have witnessed, the horrifying image or the voice speaking the unspeakable, in order to exist in the world we must and we do forget, we live in a state of I know but I do not know.”
― Katie Kitamura, Intimacies

“literature moves him. One of his professors calls it “the pleasure of being touched by great art.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“The funny thing about a picture, thought Woolly, the funny thing about a picture is that while it knows everything that’s happened up until the moment it’s been taken, it knows absotively nothing about what will happen next. And yet, once the picture has been framed and hung on a wall, what you see when you look at it closely are all the things that were about to happen. All the un-things. The things that were unanticipated. And unintended. And unreversible.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“All parents want to hear good things about their children, but sometimes you had to say bad things. If you said the bad things too subtly, the parents didn’t believe you. If you said the bad things too baldly, the parents got upset. Actually, they often didn’t believe you anyway and then they got upset, too. It was like having an intervention for an alcoholic every twenty minutes for an entire working day.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser