Cori

“Elisabeth hungered after pain, other people’s pain to dull her own; the pain of those poor everyday people fed her life. She had become addicted to misery.”
― Edward Carey, Little

“Cary, back in her life again. A place in his life. Shiloh liked being an emergency contact. She just wanted contact. She wanted to pull those old warm feelings through the empty years and into the present. She wanted to repot them here and find them a nice sunny window.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Slow Dance

“Dream House as an Exercise in Point of View

You were not always just a You. I was whole—a symbiotic relationship between my best and worst parts—and then, in one sense of the definition, I was cleaved: a neat lop that took first person—that assured, confident woman, the girl detective, the adventurer—away from second, who was always anxious and vibrating like a too-small breed of dog.
I left, and then lived: moved to the East Coast, wrote a book, moved in with a beautiful woman, got married, bought a rambling Victorian in Philadelphia. Learned things: how to make Manhattans and use starchy pasta water to create sauces and keep succulents alive.
But you. You took a job as a standardized-test grader. You drove seven hours to Indiana every other week for a year. You churned out mostly garbage for the second half of your MFA. You cried in front of many people. You missed readings, parties, the supermoon. You tried to tell your story to people who didn’t know how to listen. You made a fool of yourself, in more ways than one.
I thought you died, but writing this, I’m not sure you did.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

“She’d spent more years missing Cary than knowing him. All those years burnishing his memory with nostalgia. Cary.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Slow Dance