Olivia (Stories For Coffee)

“We were born together, we died together. I cannot live without you.”
― Katherine Arden, The Warm Hands of Ghosts

“Armageddon was a fire in the harbor, a box delivered on a cold day. It wasn't one great tragedy, but ten million tiny ones, and everyone faced theirs alone.”
― Katherine Arden, The Warm Hands of Ghosts

“(...) the reason I was always reading was simply to escape, to let myself be comforted by a few sentences or a story. When I was younger I wanted more than anything to be a character in a novel. To be immortal and live forever in a book, then everyone can read me and watch me from the outside.”
― Benedict Wells, Vom Ende der Einsamkeit

“The gown rustles and slides around her, speaking a glossolalia all of its own, the silk moving against the rougher nap of the underskirts, the bone supports of the bodice straining and squealing against their coverings, the cuffs scuffing and chafing the skin of her wrists, the stiffened collar hooking and nibbling at her nape, the hip supports creaking like the rigging of a ship. It is a symphony, an orchestra of fabrics, and Lucrezia would like to cover her ears, but she cannot.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait