Birdie

“Whoever's reading this, if anyone is reading it: does it matter that our old selves are lost to us as surely as the past is lost, or is it enough to know yes we lived then, and we are living now, and the connection must be there? Like a river hundreds of miles long exists both at its source and at its mouth, simultaneously?”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

“It's funny about love', Sophia said. 'The more you love someone, the less he likes you back.'
'That's very true,' Grandmother observed. 'And so what do you do?'
'You go on loving,' said Sophia threateningly. 'You love harder and harder.”
― Tove Jansson, The Summer Book

“I will not be browbeaten, however nicely you do it. I am done with things happening to me. From here on out, I am going to happen to things.”
― Courtney Milan, The Governess Affair

“It was better not to judge the man who had gone down under an impossible burden. It was better to remember: Thou knowest this man's fall, but thou knowest not his wrassling.”
― James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son