Emily Mayo

“These days, Potterstown was as much museum as city, its past glory evident less in its people - many of whom walked around with something of a shell-shocked look, as if modernity itself had caught them unawares - than in the fine old buildings that had outlived the purposes for which they'd been built.”
― Adelle Waldman, Help Wanted

“They both desired written objects. The post office was reliable, tangible, evincing an emotionality. It all felt intimate. Asleep in the sun. Who needed a phone?”
― Jami Attenberg, A Reason to See You Again

“That’s when I see Lenore Dove. She’s up on a ridge, her red dress plastered to her body, one hand clutching the bag of gumdrops. As the train passes, she tilts her head back and wails her loss and rage into the wind. And even though it guts me, even though I smash my fists into the glass until they bruise, I’m grateful for her final gift. That she’s denied Plutarch the chance to broadcast our farewell. The moment our hearts shattered? It belongs to us.”
― Suzanne Collins, Sunrise on the Reaping

“Life! - Life, its sea and sky, the heat of blood and breath. Life: In it was every color, was the weight of brick on brick and foot on stone, was hunger and thirst and shivering from rain, was swifts and seagulls and dragonflies and sand, was meat, was bread, was salt. Life, my life, my sight and taste and touch, the only things I had that were mine alone, that had come into the world with me and that when I left the world would never be again. Heart and lungs, hands and tongue, elbows and teeth and liver and cheeks and spine and breasts and brain, those parts of me that had not been thrown to the winds with my sister or the ashes of my friend, the heavy animal parts of me that every minute sang the oldest hymn: I want, I want, I want to live. Despite it all, I want to live.”
― Emery Robin, The Sea Eternal