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“I remember thinking, this must be what it is like to be in love. Love as a place of rest.”
― Hisham Matar, My Friends

“Inside her there was only the perfect, blank brightness of belief and desire. Desire is the cause of all suffering. The greater the desire, the greater the suffering, and now she desired greatness itself. With all her will, she directed the thought to Heaven and the watching statues: Whatever suffering it takes, I can bear it.”
― Shelley Parker-Chan, She Who Became the Sun

“I felt as if this pain would never be appeased, that it had me in its grip for ever, that it would prevent me from devoting myself to anything else, and that I was allowing it to do so. I think that is what they call being consumed with remorse.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“There are photographs of both of us, taken at about the same time: I am eighteen, she is nearly forty. Today I could almost be her mother and the grandmother of that sad-eyed girl. I am so sorry for them – for me because I am so young and I understand nothing; for her because her future is closed and she has never understood anything.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, A Very Easy Death