Emily Mayo

“Rhy almost forgot that Kell had come to say good-bye, that he was leaving, and then a breeze cut through, sudden and biting, and the darkness whispered from the back of his mind, the sorrow of loss and the guilt of survival and the fear that he would keep outliving those he loved. That this borrowed life would be too long or too short, and there forever was the inevitable cusp, blessing or curse, blessing or curse, and the feeling of leaning forward into a gust of wind as it tried with every step to force him back.”
― V.E. Schwab

“We who still live do what we must. Life is a hurricane, and we board up to save what we can and bow low to the earth to crouch in that small space above the dirt where the wind will not reach. We honor anniversaries of deaths by cleaning graves and sitting next to them before fires, sharing food with those who will not eat again. We raise children and tell them other things about who they can be and what they are worth: to us, everything. We love each other fiercely, while we live and after we die. We survive; we are savages.”
― Jesmyn Ward, Men We Reaped: A Memoir

“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

“Not once in those years with Tenn did he question his right to gorge himself on beauty until he burst, and then to drop everything to chase the deer into the woods for more. He should have known better. No one gets away with such a life.”
― Christopher Castellani, Leading Men