Bex Brownsword

“In later years, I would think: If only we had had a few more weeks with him close to our side, away from the word; if only we could have convinced him that safety was valuable, and that we could be the ones to provide it to him. But we hadn't had a few more weeks, and we hasn't been able to convince him.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, To Paradise

“And now Charles's world had become his world as well, and for the first time in their friendship there was a trench, and there was no way for her to come to him, and no way that he could return to her.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, To Paradise

“We don't talk about what brought us here, the spontaneous asphyxiation hanging between us like a silent, low-gravity dream. Instead we meet in the dark, and all the wholly unoriginal, too generous things men are prone to saying before they come sound startling and true. Tender, silly words. Vocabulary you receive as a good sport and volley back with your eyes closed. Because when it is over, when he is bending over to collect his pants, there is a world beyond the door with traffic and measles and no room for these heady, optimistic words.”
― Raven Leilani, Luster

“I’ve tried in this telling, time and again, to pinpoint the moment where serything starts to fall apart. Everything, meaning me. But there's also the opposite, where some little nut cracks open inside you and a tree starts to grow. Even harder to nail. Because that thing's going to be growing a long time before you notice. Years maybe. Then one day you say, Huh, that little crack between my ears has turned into this whole damn tree of wonderful.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead