Austin Segal

“And what I return to, the me-ness that I know as pure, inescapable self...is hunger. Desire. Longing, this longing to possess, to become, to break like a wave on a rock and reform, and break again, and wash away. This is a necessary part of any ecosystem, but it unsettles others, this inability to be satisfied. It is difficult—it is very difficult, to befriend where you wish to consume, to find those who, when they ask Do I have you still, when they end a letter with Yours, mean it in any substantive way.”
― Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War

“You remember I promised you infiltration from my very first letter—dared you to be infected by me. I couldn't know, then—I couldn't, and nor could you—how thoroughly you were already inside me, shielding me from the future. You've always been the hunger at the heart of me, Red—my teeth, my claws, my poisoned apple. Under the spreading chestnut tree, I made you and you made me.”
― Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone

“Love him,’ said Jacques, with vehemence, ‘love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters? And how long, at the best, can it last, since you are both men and still have everywhere to go? Only five minutes, I assure you, only five minutes, and most of that, helas! in the dark. And if you think of them as dirty, then they will be dirty— they will be dirty because you will be giving nothing, you will be despising your flesh and his. But you can make your time together anything but dirty, you can give each other something which will make both of you better—forever—if you will not be ashamed, if you will only not play it safe.’ He paused, watching me, and then looked down to his cognac. ‘You play it safe long enough,’ he said, in a different tone, ‘and you’ll end up trapped in your own dirty body, forever and forever and forever—like me.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“Paul chafed at this second coming out, at being in again at all, and so suddenly. Is it endless? he thought, like Russian nesting dolls, with no tiny solid center?”
― Andrea Lawlor, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl