Em

“A body could be labeled but a person couldn’t, and the difference between the two depended on that muscle in your chest. That beloved organ, not sentient, not aware, not feeling, just pumping along, keeping you alive.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

“That was the thing about death. Only the specifics of it hurt. Death, in a general sense, was background noise. She stood in the silence of it.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

“Pain is not the only touchstone for growth, I said to myself.”
― Otessa Moshfegh

“At times a person will make eye contact with Marianne, a bus conductor or someone looking for change, and she’ll be shocked briefly into the realisation that this is in fact her life, that she is actually visible to other people. This feeling opens her to certain longings: hunger and thirst, a desire to speak Swedish, a physical desire to swim or dance.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People