Amanda Belcher

“Real love feels less like a throbbing, pulsing animal begging for its freedom and beating against the inside of my chest and more like, 'Hey, that place you like had fish tacos today and i got you some while i was out', as it sets a bag spotted with grease on the dining room table. It's not a game you don't understand the rules of, or a test you never got the materials to study for. It never leaves you wondering who could possibly be texting at 3 am. Or what you could possibly do to make it come home and stay there. It's fucking boring, dude. I don't walk around mired in uneasiness, waiting for the other shoe to drop. No parsing through spun tales about why it took her so long to come back from the store. No checking her emails or calling her job to make sure she's actually there. No sitting in my car outside her house at dawn, to make sure she's alone when she leaves. This feels safe, and steadfast, and predictable. And secure. It's boring as shit. And it's easily the best thing I've ever felt.”
― Samantha Irby, We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.

“Everyone thinks I’m going to eventually die of a heart attack, but joke’s on y’all—it’s definitely going to be of secondhand embarrassment.”
― Samantha Irby, Wow, No Thank You.

“But a life without art, without wonder, without beautiful things—she would go mad. She has gone mad.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“They would be friends until they both finally acknowledged the truth. And they would have everything that other couples had—the arguments and the hand-holding in the market and the gradual exploration of their bodies and the birthday celebrations and the journeys to new cities and the living as one and sharing a bed and the gradual sense of melting into each other. Their names would be entwined—Roman and Iris or Winnow and Kitt because could you truly have one without the other?”
― Rebecca Ross, Divine Rivals