Matt Stevens

“At any rate, Therese thought, she was happier than she ever had been before. And why worry about defining everything?”
― Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt

“Consider a turkey that is fed every day. Every single feeding will firm up the bird’s belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race “looking out for its best interests,” as a politician would say. On the afternoon of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, something unexpected will happen to the turkey. It will incur a revision of belief.*”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“Then came the most exquisite moment of her whole life passing a stone urn with flowers in it. Sally stopped; picked a flower; kissed her on the lips. The whole world might have turned upside down! The others disappeared; there she was alone with Sally. And she felt that she had been given a present, wrapped up, and told just to keep it, not to look at it — a diamond, something infinitely precious, wrapped up, which, as they walked (up and down, up and down), she uncovered, or the radiance burnt through, the revelation, the religious feeling!”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“And here’s why it worked: man or woman, gay, straight, bisexual, you name it, we all just want to be teased.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo