Ayla

“It’s like before the Breakdown people used to spend their whole lives making cocoons for themselves out of furniture and ornaments and books and toys and pictures and any kind of shit they could find. As though they hoped they’d be born out of the cocoon as something else.”
― M.R. Carey, The Girl With All the Gifts

“In general, cats obey a practically Byzantine series of ceremonies and take it very badly if you disturb them during their mysterious rites.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“How can a little snail grow in its stone prison? This is a *natural* question, which can be asked quite naturally. (I should prefer not to ask it, however, because it takes me back to the questions of my childhood.) But for the Abbé de Vallemont it is a question that remains unanswered and he adds: "When it is a matter of nature, we rarely find ourselves on familiar ground. At every step, there is something that humiliates and mortifies proud minds." In other words, a snail's shell, this house that grows with its inmate, is one of the marvels of the universe. And the Abbé de Vallemont concludes that, in general... shells are "sublime subjects of contemplation for the mind.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

“The truth is the truth, the only prize worth having. If you deny it, you’re only showing that you’re unworthy of it.”
― M.R. Carey, The Girl With All the Gifts