Sian

“She looks at me, square in the eye. Taking aim. And then she pulls the trigger. “Because I hated you.”
The wind, the noise, it all just goes quiet for a second, and I’m left with a dull ringing in my ear, like after a show, like after a heart monitor goes to flatline.
“Hated me? Why?”
“You made me stay.” She says it quietly, and it almost gets lost in the wind and the traffic and I’m not sure I heard her. But then she repeats it louder this time. “You made me stay!”
And there it is. A hollow blown through my heart, confirming what some part of me has always known.
She knows.”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“The goal of practice is always to keep our beginner’s mind.”
― Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice

“When Tatiana looked up from her ice cream, she saw a soldier staring at her from across the street.”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“I began to feel like I was wearing a sign on my forehead that said FUCKED UP in big neon letters.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia