Boyd

“We’re not very good at peace, not really. War is in our nature,’ he said.
‘Men’s nature,’ she corrected.”
― Barry Kirwan, When the children come

“So many people are shut up tight inside themselves like boxes, yet they would open up, unfolding quite wonderfully, if only you were interested in them.”
― Sylvia Plath, Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose and Diary Excerpts

“When you could discern a real threat from everything else, it was called caution. When you couldn't, it was called paranoia.

...

You cannot separate paranoia from knowledge. The more you know, the more possibilities you see. The more possibilities you see, the more possibilities someone else sees. The more "someones" there are, the more "they" there are. It's a matter of simple math before you realize that They might not like you.”
― Craig Clevenger, Dermaphoria

“Once I asked Ma who’d taken the picture, but she couldn’t remember. Maybe Ma’s death took it, I thought. Maybe it was laughing back at her, knowing everything that would happen, as she posed in happy ignorance. In Ma’s young face there was no trace that Anthony Jr. would strangle himself inside her. That her husband would leave, that her daughter would become me.”
― Wally Lamb, She's Come Undone