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“You’ve gotta be your own God in this fucked up world. That’s the only way to be happy.” There wasn’t a tremble of doubt in her voice, and it pulled the breath from my lungs, leaving me speechless.”
― Emma E. Murray, When the Devil: A Novelette

“What should our second generation have done, what should it do with the knowledge of the horrors of the extermination of the Jews? We should not believe we can comprehend the incomprehensible, we may not compare the incomparable, we may not inquire because to inquire is to make the horrors an object of discussion, even if the horrors themselves are not questioned, instead of accepting them as something in the face of which we can only fall silent in revulsion, shame and guilt. Should we only fall silent in revulsion, shame and guilt? To what purpose?”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

“Home is a place in the mind. When it is empty, it frets. It is fretful with memory, faces and places and times gone by. Beloved images rise up in disobedience and make a mirror for emptiness. Then what resentful wonder, and what half-aimless seeking. It is a silly state of affairs. It is a silly creature that tries to get a smile from even the most familiar and loving shadow. Comical and hopeless, the long gaze back is always turned inward.”
― Maeve Brennan, The Visitor

“This is what I can't stand about you AI natives—this assumption that as long as you ask a question, you'll always get your answer. I am not an AI. Try having a guess or coming up with your own theory from time to time. I don't give marks for answers that fail to show their working. Some people might, but I'm not one of them. If your success is a fluke, when you're not sure you could manage twice in a row, then it's no success at all.”
― Rie Qudan, Sympathy Tower Tokyo