Salma

“For Zaza

If there are tears in my eyes tonight, is it because you are no longer alive, or because I am? I should dedicate this story to you, but I know that you no longer exist anywhere, and my writing to you like this is pure literary artifice. In any case, this isn’t really your story, only one inspired by us. You were not Andrée; nor was I Sylvie, who speaks in my name.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Inseparables

“And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“We made small talk, like adults do; but I suddenly understood, with astonishment and joy, that the emptiness in my heart, my gloomy feeling of recent days, had only one cause: the absence of Andrée. Living without her was no longer living.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Inseparable

“The sorrow was so large it threatened to tear through my skin. When he died, all things swift and beautiful and bright would be buried with him.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles