Jennifer

“Part of the process," Pearl informed him as they cut through the living room, with the nonchalant air of a native unfazed by the curious customs of the land.”
― Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“No, I mean really listen. Here's a
story, and you don't have to visit many
houses to find it. One person is talking,
the other one is not really listening.
someone can look like they are but they're
actually thinking about something they
want to say, or their minds are just
wandering. Or they're looking at that
little box people hold in their hands these
days. And people get discouraged, so they
quit trying. And the very quiet people,
you may have noticed, are often the sad
people.”
― Mary Oliver, Dog Songs: Poems

“Sometimes you need to scorch everything to the ground, and start over. After the burning the soil is richer, and new things can grow. People are like that, too. They start over. They find a way.”
― Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“They meant well, all of them. How could she explain that this city was a graveyard? That they were walking every day through streets where there had been a holocaust, a mass murder of neglect and antipathy, that when they stepped through a pocket of cold air, didn’t they understand it was a ghost, it was a boy the world had spat out?”
― Rebecca Makkai, The Great Believers