Carmen

“A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“But Robin: their dear little Robs. More than ten years later, his death remained an agony; there was no glossing any detail; its horror was not subject to repair or permutation by any of the narrative devices that the Cleves knew. And—since this willful amnesia had kept Robin's death from being translated into that sweet old family vernacular which smoothed even the bitterest mysteries into comfortable, comprehensible form—the memory of that day's events had a chaotic, fragmented quality, bright mirrorshards of nightmare which flared at the smell of wisteria, the creaking of a clothes-line, a certain stormy cast of spring light.”
― Donna Tartt, The Little Friend

“I wonder how many ways there are for a mother to produce that wreckage in her own daughter, and my muscles tense as I think of them.”
― Jon McGregor, If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things

“In real life nothing means anything. Stuff happens and there just is no structure.”
― Scarlett Thomas, Going Out