Austin Segal

“I think,” Juna says after a pause, “that the thing about losing someone isn’t the loss but the absence of afterwards. D’you know what I mean? The endlessness of that.” She looks sideways at me and sniffs. “My friends were sad, people who knew my sister were sad, but everyone moves on after a month. It’s all they can manage. It doesn’t mean they weren’t sad, just that things keep going or something, I don’t know.” She rolls her shoulder, shakes her head. “It’s hard when you look up and realise that everyone’s moved off and left you in that place by yourself. Like they’ve all gone on and you’re there still, holding on to this person you’re supposed to let go of.”
― Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

“Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?”
― 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

“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