Annie

“I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering, and that I was human after all.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“The eye was shocking.
It was really beautiful.
You could see light in its dark, and it also had in it, both at once, two things I had never seen together in one place, gentleness, and – what?
Politeness? Indifference? Distance?
I won’t know the word for it till now, years after, right this minute, walking to wherever in the dark and permitting myself to think back to the moment I first ever saw, so close to my own eyes, any horse’s, this horse’s, eye.
The word is equanimity. (p.47)”
― Ali Smith, Gliff

“I suppose you do love me, in your way,” I said to him one night close to dawn when we lay on the narrow bed. “And how else should I love you —in your way?” he asked. I am still thinking about that.”
― Anne Carson, Plainwater: Essays and Poetry

“How many perfect autumns did a person get? Why did I seem always to be in the wrong place, listening to the wrong music?”
― Elif Batuman, Either/Or