Effa Izzaty

“Do you ever think what might've happened if they weren't so damn impatient? If Romeo had stopped for a second and gotten a doctor, or waited for Juliet to wake up? Not jumped to conclusions and gone and poisoned himself thinking she was dead when she was just sleeping? I've seen that movie so many times, and every damn time, it's like screaming at the girl in the horror movie. Don't go in the basement. The killer's down there. With Romeo and Juliet, I yell, 'Don't jump to conclusions.' But do those fools ever listen to me? I always imagine what might've happened if they'd waited. Juliet would've woken up. They'd already be married. They might've moved away, far away from the Montagues and the Capulets, gotten themselves a cute castle of their own. Decorated it up nice. Maybe it would've been like The Winter's Tale. By thinking Hermione was dead, Leontes had time to stop acting like a fool and then later he was so happy to find out she was alive. Maybe the Montagues and the Capulets would find out later that their beloved kids weren't dead, and wasn't it stupid to feud, and everyone would be happy. Maybe it would've turned the whole tragedy into a comedy.”
― Gayle Forman, Just One Day

“It's sad when everyone knows you, but no one knows you.”
― Ava Dellaira, Love Letters to the Dead

“Willem puts down his fork and knife.

'This is falling in love.'

With his finger, he swipes a bit of the Nutella from inside his crepe and puts a dollop on the inside of my wrist. It is hot and oozy and starts to melt against my sticky skin, but before it has a chance to slither away, Willem licks his thumb and wipes the smear of Nutella off and pops it into his mouth. It all happens fast, like a lizard zapping a fly.

'This is being in love.'

And he takes my other wrist, the one with my watch on it, and moves the watchband around until he sees what he's looking for. Once again, he licks his thumb. Only this time, he rubs it against my birthmark, hard, as if trying to scrub it off.

'Being in love is a birthmark?' I joke as I retract my arm. But my voice has a tremble in it, and the place where his wet thumbprint is drying against my skin burns somehow.

'It's something that never comes off, no matter how much you might want it to.'

'You're comparing love to a...stain?'

He leans so far back in his seat that the front legs of his chair scrape off the floor. He looks very satisfied, with the crepe or with himself, I'm not sure.

'Exactly.”
― Gayle Forman, Just One Day

“The important thing is that another medium—stage, film, music—doesn’t obliterate a book. The movie is here now, on a big screen, with stars and costumes and a score. But the book hasn’t gone away. It has simply grown up, grown larger, and begun to glisten in a new way.”
― Lois Lowry, The Giver