Lizzy

“Their missed connection was the rare kind of adolescent regret that, with time and maturity, became more rather than less painful. She was now, in his mind, far more than a person. She had to come to represent every decision he hadn't made, every opportunity forgone. She was regret personified. One can get over bad decisions, lovers lost. But it is impossible to get over someone you never really had.”
― A. Natasha Joukovsky, The Portrait of a Mirror

“her identity had been so wrapped up in being the precocious child that she’d turned into an inept adult.”
― A. Natasha Joukovsky, The Portrait of a Mirror

“Those who have subdued their ego understand that it doesn’t degrade you when others treat you poorly; it degrades them.”
― Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“There was a seductive, asymmetric quality to sympathy: so many reasons you might need it, yet such a narrow moral purview for eliciting the real, true, genuine thing.”
― A. Natasha Joukovsky, The Portrait of a Mirror