Kyle

“The distance is unbearable if you let yourself dwell on it.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“Is this your first time staying with us?" a woman at a reception desk for the third or fourth hotel said to her, and Olive wasn't sure how to answer, because if you've stayed in one Marriott, haven't you stayed in all of them?”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“I can only say that although it seems that in childhood there is endless time for everything, in fact there is only enough of time for a tiny set of things to occur, and that those things happening, one after another, to a person, or to persons not cognizant of the incredible brevity of the event, the things happen at times as if to one who is asleep. Only after do we wake and wonder—how could I have never said this, or known that. What did I give up unknowingly? So often it seems there was a place adjacent to the one in which we were—and yet we never went there. It would have been the work of a moment to do so. But it never happened and now it never can.”
― Jesse Ball, The Repeat Room

“Oh, he took a job in industry,” they would say, as if “industry” here was a euphemism like a farm for old sick dogs. And they said it with a kind, patronizing lilt that betrayed what they truly meant: alt academia meant failure. The life of the mind, unfettered from commerce, was the only kind worth living.”
― R.F. Kuang, Katabasis