Manderley

“I'm not what anyone thinks I am. I never was. I didn't have the mouth to put it into words, to say what was wrong, to change the things I felt I needed to change. And every day it was difficult, walking around and knowing that people saw me one way, knowing that they were wrong, so completely wrong, that the real me was invisible to them. It didn't even exist to them. So: If nobody sees you, are you still there?”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“If you didn't tell other people, was it real or was it just something the two of you were telling yourselves?”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“The truth. There isn't any. All we've managed to find out about the boundaries of the universe is that it hasn't got any, and all we know about God is that we don't know anything. So the only thing a mum who was a priest demanded of her family was simple: that we do our best. We plant an apple tree today, even if we know the world is going to be destroyed tomorrow. We save those we can”
― Fredrick Backman, Anxious People

“Alone is a feeling you can get used to, and it's hard to believe in a better alternative.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji