kathy

“For January, I don't care how the story ends as long as I spend it with you.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“At midnight she went to brush her teeth and he turned the lights off in the kitchen. Emerging from the bathroom she said: See, I obviously had an ulterior motive, because I brought my toothbrush. She followed him into his room and he shut the door behind them, saying something inaudible. She laughed, and through the door her laughter was softened and musical. In the darkness the main room of the apartment lay quiet again and still. Two empty bowls had been left in the sink, two spoons, and empty water glass with a faint print of clear lip balm on the rim. Through the door the sound of conversation murmured on, the words rounded out, indistinct, and by one in the morning silence had fallen. At half past five the sky began to lighten in the east-facing living room window, from black to blue and then to silvery white. Another day. The call of a crow from an overhead power line. The sound of buses in the street.”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

“If you have always been criticised, from before you can remember, it becomes more or less impossible to locate yourself in the time or space before the criticism was made: to believe, in other words, that you yourself exist.”
― Rachel Cusk, Second Place

“Here was something else that she could not share. She could not conceive of her country emotionally: it was a way of living, and abstract of several landscapes, or an oblique frayed island, moored at the north but with an air of being detached and washed out west from the British coast.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, Der letzte September