Nicol Estabillo

“Is the air okay?" I texted.

"It hurts a little to breathe," my sister texted back. "But we're okay."

Jesus, I thought, is there a better and more succinct definition of grief than It hurts a little to breathe, but we're okay?”
― Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“The only way my head was going truly somewhere else was to travel to a different life and not a different airport.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“Krishna was the unborn original Personality of Godhead, appearing on earth to destroy demonic men and to establish the eternal religion, pure love of God.”
― Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Mahabharata

“You see,” said Tony, her voice still soft so as not to be overheard, but somehow fierce and angry, “it frightens me when people try to grab at us like that. I can’t sit still and just let people watch me and talk to me and ask me questions. You see,” she said again, as though trying to moderate her words and explain, “they want to pull us back, and start us all over again just like them and doing the things they want to do and acting the way they want to act and saying and thinking and wanting all the things they live with every day.”
― Shirley Jackson, Hangsaman