Carrie

“But in fact I was like Ossie, in this one regard: I was consumed by a helpless, often furious love for a ghost. Every rock on the island, every swaying tree branch or dirty dish in our house was like a word in a a sentence that I could read about my mother. All objects and events on our island, every single thing that you could see with your eyes, were like clues that I could use to reinvent her: would our mom love this thing, would she hate it? For a second I luxuriated in a real hatred of my brother.”
― Karen Russell, Swamplandia!

“The heron is painted a somber Madonna blue, my only criticism of it. Turquoise would have been my choice, I tell him. "Turquoise is what that blue would look like if she divorced the night and went on a fabulous vacation.”
― Karen Russell, Orange World and Other Stories

“American did not conquer the West through superior technology, nor did it demonstrate the advantages of democracy. American "won" the West by blood, brutality and terror.”
― David Treuer, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present

“But coming out of that sleep was excruciating. My entire life flashed before my eyes in the worst way possible, my mind refilling itself with all my lame memories, every little thing that had brought me to where I was. I'd try to remember something else—a better version, a happy story, maybe, or just an equally lame but different life that would at least be refreshing in its digressions—but it never worked. I was always still me. Sometimes I woke up with my face wet with tears. The only times I cried, in fact, were when I was pulled out of that nothingness, when the alarm on my cell phone went off.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation