Eartha Adolf

“She was inches from my face, really squinting, as if it were a section of a globe she'd never closely inspected before, an ocean filled with strings of unnamed islands.”
― Marisha Pessl, Night Film

“Nothing as singular or as important had happened since the day of his birth. She returned his gaze, struck by the sense of her own transformation, and overwhelmed by the beauty in a face which a lifetime's habit had taught her to ignore. She whispered his name with the deliberation of a child trying out the distinct sounds. When he replied with her name, it sounded like a new word - the syllables remained the same, the meaning was different. Finally he spoke the three simple words that no amount of bad art or bad faith can ever quite cheapen. She repeated them, with exactly the same emphasis on the second word, as if she had been the one to say them first. He had no religious belief, but it was impossible not to think of an invisible presence or witness in the room, and that these words spoken aloud were like signatures on an unseen contract”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“Even now, an immigrant is an extreme person. No matter how bad circumstances are in your native country, regardless of the death threat, complacency and entropy means most people will stay put amid famine and genocide. Anyone who crosses deserts and mountains and oceans and borders because life means more to him than stillness is brave. Never disrespect an immigrant. The brilliance of America is the constant regeneration of this daring population. And it is how this country started. And keeps renewing.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, Creatocracy: How the Constitution Invented Hollywood

“A lot of people get so hung up on what they can't have that they don't think for a second about whether they really want it.”
― Lionel Shriver, Checker and the Derailleurs