niall mcdowell

“Was that what was so painful: that nobody had ever come so close to me- nobody had ever seen me, and come right up to me, and kept going, and looked into my eyes so seriously, with so little fear?”
― Elif Batuman, Either/Or

“All the girls in the world leave their stomachs forever at the top of their first wooden roller coaster. And I think often of the son grinning and looking straight ahead and that's what love is. The most cruel, the funniest joke in the world.”
― Gabriel Smith, Brat

“Where there’s a secret,’ she says, ‘there’s shame – and shame is something we can do without.”
― Claire Keegan, Foster

“It was not death she feared. It was misunderstanding.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God