Sydney Y

“Like all modern courthouses, this one is a characterless fortress, testament to paper pushing, bureaucracy, and the incipient insanity of our system. Going postal is no longer reserved for those who pledge that “Neither rain nor snow nor gloom of night would deter its couriers from their appointed rounds.” It’s become a kind of rite of passage: disgruntled employee returns and shoots boss, disgruntled wife kills kids, disgruntled husband wrecks car, kills strangers, and then kills wife. Hard not to be surprised, when the bulk of public conversation goes like this: “Paper or plastic?” The loss of the human touch scares me.”
― A.M. Homes, May We Be Forgiven

“Margot slipped her pocketbook over her shoulder to slip away. Maybe she was a bit drunk, maybe not drunk enough, preoccupied with an imaginary broken heart, a confused heart, she surrendered to the familiar sensation of being the only sad person at the party.”
― Wendell Steavenson, Margot

“A noise recalled him to Saint-Sulpice; the choir was leaving; the church was about to close. “I should have tried to pray,” he thought. “It would have been better than sitting here in the empty church, dreaming in my chair—but pray? I have no desire to pray. I am haunted by Catholicism, intoxicated by its atmosphere of incense and candle wax. I hover on its outskirts, moved to tears by its prayers, touched to the very marrow by its psalms and chants. I am revolted with my life, I am sick of myself, but so far from changing my ways! And yet … and yet … however troubled I am in these chapels, as soon as I leave them I become unmoved and dry. In the end,” he told himself, as he rose and followed the last ones out, shepherded by the Swiss guard, “in the end, my heart is hardened and smoked dry by dissipation. I am good for nothing.” —J.-K. Huysmans, En route”
― Michel Houellebecq, Submission

“The eternal youth of the world makes me feel breathless. Some things I loved have vanished. A great many others have been given to me.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed