Jennifer (formerly Eccentric Muse)

“The joy of having been standardized was that you didn't need to think beyond a certain area. Like a death handled well, a box had been put around you, and within it you could feel safe.”
― Weike Wang, Joan Is Okay

“Americans he found to be so outwardly happy all the time and superficially positive. To be indiscriminately happy seemed to him as much of a curse as to be indiscriminately sad.”
― Weike Wang, Joan Is Okay

“Basil Ransom had got up just as Mrs. Luna made this last declaration; for a young lady had glided into the room, who stopped short as it fell upon her ears. She stood there looking, consciously and rather seriously, at Mr. Ransom; a smile of exceeding faintness played about her lips--it was just perceptible enough to light up the native gravity of her face. It might have been likened to a thin ray of moonlight resting upon the wall of a prison.”
― Henry James, The Bostonians

“He said to me once: it is the mind that made the bombs that is killing the world. For that purpose the bombs are not needed.”
― Lydia Millet, Oh Pure And Radiant Heart