Arvilla Seals

“Often, the outward and visible material signs and symbols of happiness and success only show themselves when the process of decline has already set in. The outer manifestations take time - like the light of that star up there, which may in reality be already quenched, when it looks to us to be shining its brightest.”
― Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family

“Great griefs exhaust. They discourage us with life. The man into whom they enter feels something taken from him. In youth, their visit is sad; later on, it is ominous.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“He summoned you into the circle, Scott. For whatever reason, I don't know. But now you've left, you've become a loose thread. He won't sit back with the possibility you might cause his whole world to unravel around him.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Elephant Tree

“Miranda's reward to herself, after a chief investigator dubbed her "the Eloise of four-year-old detectives," was to stretch her age.  She’d now taken to informing people that she was four- and-a-half-and-three-quarters. She didn't seem to grasp the concept of almost-five.”
― Theasa Tuohy, Mademoiselle le Sleuth