Stacey

“We move through this world so lightly," said Marie, misquoting one of Leon's favorite songs, and for a warm moment he thought she meant it in a general sense, all of humanity, all these individual lives passing over the surface of the world with little trace, but then he understood that she meant the two of them specifically, Leon and Marie, and he couldn't blame his chill on the encroaching night. In their late thirties they'd decided not to have children, which at the time seemed like a sensible way to avoid unnecessary complications and heartbreak, and this decision had lent their lives a certain ease that he'd always appreciated, a sense of blissful unencumbrance. But an encumbrance might also be thought of as an anchor, and what he'd found himself thinking lately was that he wouldn't mind being more anchored to this earth.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, The Glass Hotel

“I vaguely recall a sense of discomfort, not with my surroundings but with what was inside of me. I had been taught for most of my life that the moment for living was yet to come, that the phase I was living in, a perpetual state of childhood, was a time for waiting. And so I waited, impatiently, resentfully, longing for this period of incapacitation to pass. And in that interim, I listened less than I should have, and felt no need to engage.”
― Anvi Doshi

“Love wasn't a slumber party with your best friend. Love was dangerous, violent, with an element of something repulsive; attraction had a permeable border with repulsion. Love had death in it, and madness. To try to escape those things was immature and anti-novelistic.”
― Elif Batuman, Either/Or

“Sometimes the conscience makes demands that are non-negotiable. Courage has nothing to do with it. We weren't here because we were brave. We were here because we had to be here.”
― Robert Charles Wilson, The Chronoliths