Jaqi

“a complex hierarchy of cells for concubines opens up: the least desirable women are transferred upward, as though their bodies, forgotten by men, were undergoing a mysterious process of angelification;”
― Olga Tokarczuk, Flights

“I had no idea, of course, that of all the feelings of my youth that would pass, it was this one, of an abundance of time so great as to routinely be unfillable, that would vanish with the least ceremony.”
― Curtis Sittenfeld, You Think It, I'll Say It

“From then on, the river was like a needle inserted into my formerly safe and stable surroundings, the landscape composed of the park, the greenhouses with their vegetables that grew in sad little rows, and the sidewalk with its concrete slabs where we would go to play hopscotch. This needle went all the way through, marking a vertical third dimension; so pierced, the landscape of my childhood world turned out to be nothing more than a toy made of rubber from which all the air was escaping, with a hiss.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, Flights

“That Mark’s a pediatric cardiologist mostly offsets—to me, if not to everyone—how he’s also kind of an asshole.”
― Curtis Sittenfeld, You Think It, I'll Say It