Louise

“Her only friends on the estate were books, and books can talk but do not listen.”
― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks

“Love's pure free joy when it works, but when it goes bad you pay for the good hours at loan-shark prices.”
― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks

“I thought: Suppose, suppose just once, once, all these centuries, the slippery gods keep their word and Achilles is granted eternal glory in return for his early death under the walls of Troy...? What will they make of us, the people of those unimaginably distant times? One thing I do know: they won't want the brutal reality of conquest and slavery. They won't want to be told about the massacres of men and boys, the enslavement of women and girls. They won't want to know we were living in a rape camp. No, they'll go for something altogether softer. A love story, perhaps? I just hope they manage to work out who the lovers were.”
― Pat Barker, The Silence of the Girls

“Straight people, he thinks, probably don't spend this much time convincing themselves that they're straight.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue