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“Thank you for giving me the
chance to be truly alive. Those few months were worth a few lifetimes,
don’t you think? The child you have left behind, a part of you, our daughter
– she will wander the far corners of this earth without knowing her father
… Our paths crossed once. But I know nothing about her. Neither her name
nor where she lives. But she will always be in my heart, and my mind. In
my mind I shall imagine a life for her, and in that life I shall walk beside
her. In my dreams I shall watch her growing up. I shall see her to school. I
shall know her smiles and come to understand the way she thinks, and with
all of this I shall try to fill the void ahead.”
― Sabahattin Ali

“But fuck, if she was an addiction, I never wanted to be cured.”
― Ana Huang, Twisted Games

“And if falling in love was discovery, was letting yourself be discovered the equivalent to being loved? For it tickled Alice to hear Peter make observations about her; to announce facts she’d never noticed about herself. Did she know, for instance, that she flopped her hands like a jellyfish whenever she disagreed with an argument? Did she know that she always ended up with the same diagonal streak across her forehead, left by pushing her hair back with the same chalky fingers? Peter determined that when Alice got sleepy, she lied—not in any malicious way, but in absurd ways; words just streamed from her half-conscious mouth in no sensical order. He was so amused by Alice’s unconscious lying that for weeks he recorded the sillier things she said, all so he could announce at the end of the month: “I
have concluded that your lying, sleeping self has a single motive. And it is to continue sleeping for as long as possible. You will answer in any way that convinces your interlocutor to leave you alone. For instance, see here, my transcript from Wednesday—I ask you if you are an eggplant. And you agree you are an eggplant, but that I shouldn’t worry, and that everything is fine. In the past month I have heard you agree that you are the princess of Belgravia, that your toes are really baby hamsters, and that over the holidays, you will join me skiing on the sun. You are incorrigible, Law. Your unconscious id is fiercely protective of being left alone.”
― R.F Kuang

“Name one hero who was happy."
"You can't."
"I can't."
"I know. They never let you be famous AND happy. I'll tell you a secret."
"Tell me."
"I'm going to be the first." He took my palm and held it to his. "Swear it."
"Why me?"
"Because you're the reason. Swear it."
"I swear it," I said, lost in the high color of his cheeks, the flame in his eyes.
"I swear it, he echoed.”
― Madeline Miller