Charlotte

“For women devoted to the good of others never seem to worry about themselves. Their life is ascetic, their generosity boundless, day after day their altruism devours them and sometimes they succumb to depression... It is dangerous to be good...No such danger threatened Orlanda, that is certain.”
― Jacqueline Harpman

“We are all living, at most, half of a life, she thought. There was the life you lived, which consisted of the choices you made. And then, there was the other life, the one that was the things you hadn't chosen.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“The destiny of daughters burdened with an impossible mother is tragic. When they manage to develop a healthy indifference, people say they are heartless, and when they are devoted, people say they are masochists.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, Orlanda

“Maybe that's what all lives were, though. Maybe even the most seemingly perfectly intense or worthwhile lives ultimately felt the same. Acres of disappointment and monotony and hurts and rivalries but with flashes of wonder and beauty. Maybe that was the only meaning that mattered. To be the world, witnessing itself.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library