e.s.

“Instead she thinks: I love him, and for a moment it doesn't matter whether he loves her back. It is enough to have known that the inside of her chest is more than a place for storage.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“Were they aware, in the intensity of their embrace, of something slightly ridiculous about this tableau, something almost comical, as someone nearby sneezed violently into a crumpled tissue; as a dirty discarded plastic bottle scuttled along the platform under a breath of wind; as a mechanised billboard on the station wall rotated from an advertisement for hair products to an advertisement for car insurance; as life in its ordinariness and even ugly vulgarity imposed itself everywhere all around them? Or were they in this moment unaware, or something more than unaware—were they somehow invulnerable to, untouched by, vulgarity and ugliness, glancing for a moment into something deeper, something concealed beneath the surface of life, not unreality but a hidden reality: the presence at all times, in all places, of a beautiful world?”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

“I am still waiting for the happiness I chose to kick in.”
― Emily R. Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“He matched her distance again, their foreheads meeting like old friends; Hello, how are you, been a long time, how nice it is to be here with you.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether