Esme

“I don't know then that one day I won't be seventeen. I don't know that youth doesn't last, that it's only a moment, and then it disappears and by the time you finally realize it, it's too late. It's finished, vanished, lost. There are some around me who can sense it; the adults repeat it constantly but I don't listen. Their words roll over me but don't stick. Like water off the feathers of a duck's back. I'm an idiot. An easygoing idiot.”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me

“Why me?

He says: Because you are not like all the others, because I don't see anyone but you and you don't even realize it.

He adds this phrase, which for me is unforgettable: Because you will leave and we will stay.”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me

“He loves history. He wanted to write a biography of John Quincy Adams. I, shamefully, knew almost nothing about John Quincy Adams, so I went online and bought every biography of him I could find. One day, he called me, claiming that we wouldn’t work out long term. He said he loved me but that we had different interests. “What does love mean to you?” I said. “That’s an impossible question,” he replied. I, however, find love to be quite simple. Love is the stack of biographies on my nightstand with a bookmark near the end”
― Julia Nicole Camp

“How can something be there, and then not be there? How do we forgive ourselves for all the things we did not become?”
― Doc Luben, Love Letters or Suicide Notes