Sara

“E comunque i pesci rimangono nei letti dei fiumi, come se non si accorgessero proprio di avere altri dieci metri di spazio sopra la testa in cui poter nuotare. L’acqua di una piena è putrida, piena di cose putride, e i pesci gatto e i persici, pur non amando quella inconsueta oscurità soprastante, nuotano attorno alle solite vecchie rocce, ai cespugli di alghe, ai familiari piloni dei ponti.”
― Michael McDowell, The Flood

“From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were - I have not seen
As others saw - I could not bring
My passions from a common spring -
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow - I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone -
And all I lov’d - I lov’d alone”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“But I feel maybe it’s possible you said those things, at least in some way, because you wanted me to make the other case.
As if I would come out and say, no, Eileen, it’s you or no one, I can’t be happy without you. Or whatever, whatever you wanted me to say. And maybe even when you’re getting angry at Alice, saying that she doesn’t care about you – I don’t know, maybe it’s the same idea. At some level you want her to say, oh but Eileen, I love you very much, you’re my best friend. But the problem is that you seem to be drawn to people who aren’t very good at giving you those responses. I mean, anyone could have told you – certainly Felix and myself both knew – that Alice was never going to react that way just now. And maybe it’s the same with me, in a way. If you tell me you don’t want to be with me, I might feel very hurt and humiliated, but I’m not going to start begging and pleading with you. At some level, I actually think you know I won’t. But then you get left with the impression that I don’t love you, or I don’t want you, because you’re not getting this response from me – this response that you basically know you won’t get, because I’m not the type of person who can give it to you. I don’t know.”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

“When it comes to this, I cannot help feeling that I am at the end of a fluctuation that originated with a single butterfly. I mean, with one half degree of difference, everything I want could be mine. I am good, but not good enough, which is worse than simply being bad. It is almost. The difference between being there when it happens and stepping out just in time to see it on the news.”
― Raven Leilani, Luster