emily

“It is nice, this ritual. She likes that there is a specific phrase for it, this turning down of the room, this recognition that the night is something we must prepare for. Because the night is hard... She would crawl into bed and think of all the different women she could have become. All the different ways better women end their days. How did Mia end her day? She didn't know why the end of each day always felt like such a test, but it did. It felt like a rehearsal for the end of life, which did not bode well for her, because Phoebe often did it with a drink in her hand, watching endless episodes of some period drama. Phoebe turned on all the lights at home and then her TV and lowered the woofer because the sounds of the British rifles were too realistic.”
― Alison Espach, The Wedding People

“-La mort de Cedric Diggory a été un tragique accident, dit-elle d’un ton glacial.

-C’était un meurtre, répliqua Harry.

Il se sentait trembler. Il n’avait quasiment jamais parlé de cela à personne, encore moins à une classe de trente élèves qui le dévoraient les yeux.

-Voldemort l’a tué et vous le savez très bien.”
― J. K. Rowling

“But underneath that is another feeling, a feeling of being wide-eyed awake and watchful. It's like being wakened suddenly in the middle of the night, by a hand over your face, and you sit up with your heart going fast, and no one is there. And underneath that is another feeling still, a feeling like being torn open; not like a body of flesh, it is not painful as such, but like a peach; and not even torn open, but too ripe and splitting open of its own accord.
And inside the peach there's a stone.”
― Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

“Anyway. Nothing can be done now. The past is like the Gran Cavallo and you can't fix the Gran Cavallo, right? I mean, sure, who doesn't fantasize about drawing in the rest of the horse, and maybe the sky around the horse. But what would the painting be worth then? Absolutely nothing. So it is what it is. Imperfect, unfinished, forever. We just have to move on, call it a masterpiece, even if it's not, and start working on a new goddamned painting.”
― Alison Espach, The Wedding People