tea ☘︎

“But we overlay the present onto the past. We look back through the lens of what we know now, so we’re not seeing it as the people we were, we’re seeing it as the people we are, and that means the past has been radically altered.”
― Ann Patchett, The Dutch House

“Fluffy always said there was no greater luxury for a woman than to have a window over the sink.”
― Ann Patchett, The Dutch House

“To be alive and try to be a decent person, and not turn into anything big or grand, that's the hardest thing of all. You think being president is hard? Ha. Don't you see that every president becomes a millionaire after he leaves office? If you can be nobody, and stand on your own two feet for as long as I have, that's enough. Look at my girl, all that talent and for what, just to drown in Bud Light?" [...] "People don't know what's enough, Labas. That's their problem. They think they suffer, but they're really just bored. They don't eat enough carrots.”
― Ocean Vuong, The Emperor of Gladness

“The boys had this way of knowing what the other was thinking without ever using words. "Because it's like that when you're fourteen," he said. The superpower of being young is that you're closest to being nothing - which is also the same as being very old.”
― Ocean Vuong, The Emperor of Gladness