Ida

“Perhaps Nickel was the very afterlife that awaited him, with a White House down the hill and an eternity of oatmeal and an infinite brotherhood of broken boys.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys

“His heart slowed, winding down like a music box, a season at its end.
The last air left Holland's lungs.
And then, at last, the world breathed in.”
― V.E. Schwab, A Conjuring of Light

“It wasn’t a good-bye, not really.
What was the word for parting?
Anoshe.
That was it.
Until another day.”
― V.E. Schwab, A Conjuring of Light

“Horrific as it was, the present dark, I was afraid to leave it for the other, permanent dark – jelly and bloat, the muddy pit. I had seen the shadow of it on Bunny’s face – stupid terror; the whole world opening upside down; his life exploding in a thunder of crows and the sky expanding empty over his stomach like a white ocean. Then nothing. Rotten stumps, sowbugs crawling in the fallen leaves. Dirt and dark.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History