Aravind

“He was tired of there being something shameful or unsettling about the blunt expression of friendship, of the simple desire to be there for someone needing to be mocked before it could be respected, of the fact that caring about a friend and wanting the best for them didn't hold the same value as money, when it was just as essential, if not more so.”
― Elvin James Mensah, Small Joys

“Did you know,” the old woman said now, standing beside the grown-up Annie, “that a dog will go to a crying human before a smiling one? Dogs get sad when people around them get sad. They’re created that way. It’s called empathy. “Humans have it, too. But it gets blocked by other things—ego, self-pity, thinking your own pain must be tended to first. Dogs don’t have those issues.”
― Mitch Albom, The Next Person You Meet in Heaven

“And you and I didn’t get that, not because we didn’t deserve it, we just got dealt something else. But the people who did get that love, they grew up to be different from us. More secure. Maybe they’re not as shiny or successful as you and I feel we have to be. But it’s not because they’re not interesting. They just don’t feel they have to do the tap dance, you know? They don’t have to prove themselves all the time to be loved. Because they always were.”
― Coco Mellors, Cleopatra and Frankenstein

“Their family had always been good at hellos and goodbyes, moments ending even as they began. It was easy to love someone in the beginnings and endings; it was all the time in between that was so hard.”
― Coco Mellors, Blue Sisters