Ela

“She remembered when Will had died, her agony, the long nights alone, reaching across the bed every morning when she woke up, for eighty years expecting to find him there, and only slowly growing accustomed to the fact that that side of the bed would always be empty. The moments when she had found something funny and turned to share the joke with him, only to be shocked anew that he was not there. The worst moments, when, sitting alone at breakfast, she had realized that she had forgotten the precise blue of his eyes or the depth of his laugh; that like the sound of Jem's violin, they had faded into the distance where memories are silent.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Princess

“Woolsey quirked an eyebrow. “You are a funny thing,” he said. “I would say I could see what those boys see in you, but …” He shrugged. His yellow dressing gown had a long, bloody tear in it now. “Women are not something I have ever understood.”

“What about them do you find mysterious, sir?”

“The point of them, mainly.”

“Well, you must have had a mother,” said Tessa.

“Someone whelped me, yes,” said Woolsey without much enthusiasm. “I remember her little.”

“Perhaps, but you would not exist without a woman, would you? However little use you may find us, we are cleverer and more determined and more patient than men. Men may be stronger, but it is women who endure.”

“Is that what you are doing? Enduring? Surely an engaged woman should be happier.” His light eyes raked her. “A heart divided against itself cannot stand, as they say. You love them both, and it tears you apart.”

“House,” said Tessa.

He raised an eyebrow. “What was that?”

“A house divided against itself cannot stand. Not a heart. Perhaps you should not attempt quotations if you cannot get them correct.”
― Cassandra Clare, The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Princess

“I liked the idea of living in a city — any city, especially a strange one — liked the thought of traffic and crowds, of working in a bookstore, waiting tables in a coffee shop, who knew what kind of solitary life I might slip into? Meals alone, walking the dogs in the evenings; and nobody knowing who I was.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History