Hanne De Meester

“Je peux encore tout rater, disait Lila, je suis assez jeune pour ça. Quand on vieillit, on a de moins en moins de chances de tout rater parce qu'on n'a plus le temps, et on peut vivre tranquillement en se contentant de ce qu'on a raté déjà. C'est ce qu'on entend par « paix de l'esprit ». Mais quand on n'a que seize ans et qu'on peut encore tout tenter et ne rien réussir, c'est ce qu'on appelle en général « avoir de l'avenir »...”
― Romain Gary, Les Cerfs-volants

“Do you think we'd get in trouble if anyone found out?"
"Yeah," I said right away, because even thought no one had ever told me, specifically, not to kiss a girl before, nobody had to.
It was guys and girls who kissed - in our grade, on TV, in the movies, in the world; and that's how it worked: guys and girls.
Anything else was something weird.”
― Emily M. Danforth, The Miseducation of Cameron Post

“I told myself that I didn't need any of that shit, but there it was, repeated to me day after day after day. And when you're surrounded by a bunch of mostly strangers experiencing the same thing, unable to call home, tethered to routine on ranchland miles away from anybody who might have known you before, might have been able to recognize the real you if you told them you couldn't remember who she was, it's not really like being real at all. It's plastic living. It's living in a diorama. It's living the life of one of those prehistoric insects encased in amber: suspended, frozen, dead but not, you don't know for sure.”
― Emily M. Danforth, The Miseducation of Cameron Post

“The leaves are tinged amber at the sides, the pale orange merging with the deep greens of summer. It's as though somebody has dipped a paintbrush in red watercolour paint and then left it atop a green paper towel. The pain seeps gradually through the porous paper and eventually fully stains it: within the month the leaves will be red.”
― Ruby Granger, Erimentha Parker's To Do List: A Bullying Story