Thanu

“When he was younger, Ian had assumed that as you got older things became clear. Adults had seemed so sure, so knowledgeable, not just about facts and figures but about the big questions: the difference between right and wrong; what was true and what wasn't; what life was about. He'd assumed that you went to school because you had to learn things, starting off with the easy stuff and moving on to the bigger issues, and once you'd learned them that was it, the way ahead opened up and thereafter life was simple and straightforward. what a joke. The older he got, the more complicated and obscure everything became. He understood nothing anymore--nothing and nobody, including himself.”
― Mary Lawson, The Other Side of the Bridge

“There was something abstract and gentle about the experience of being ignored—a feeling of being spared, a known impossibility of anything happening—that was consonant with my understanding of love. In theory, of course, I knew that love could be reciprocated. It was a thing that happened, often, to other people. But I was unlike other people in so many ways.”
― Elif Batuman, Either/Or

“Was that what was so painful: that nobody had ever come so close to me- nobody had ever seen me, and come right up to me, and kept going, and looked into my eyes so seriously, with so little fear?”
― Elif Batuman, Either/Or

“When I woke up in the morning, there was a second or two when I felt light and free, unaware of any reason to feel upset. Then all my knowledge and memories rushed back and a weight descended on my sternum and the creaking started behind my eyes.”
― Elif Batuman, Either/Or