Laura

“Strange, she thought, how affected you are by malice when you're a kid, how a mean work or look can unravel you, how devastating cruelty feels when you're too young to protect yourself. But eventually, after all those defense mechanisms are firmly in place, it's the so-called positive shit - mercy, not malice - that brings you to tears.”
― Jen Beagin, Vacuum in the Dark

“Strange can be quite normal. Strange can just be the phrase 'That is not important' as an answer for everything. But if your son never answered you that way before, then the fourth time you ask him why he's not eating, or if he's cold, or you send him to bed, and he answers, almost biting off the words as if he were still learning to talk, 'That is not important', I swear to you Amanda, your legs start to tremble.”
― Samanta Schweblin, Fever Dream

“Was it even possible to forgive the dead? Was forgiveness an emotion, or a transaction that required a partner? I had made a promise to someone who would never see it kept. I wanted to respect my grandfather's wish, and it would have been no trouble to evade my mother's question. Keeping secrets was the family business. But it was a business, it seemed to me, that none of us had ever profited from.”
― Michael Chabon, Moonglow

“It is easy to forget, but stories need not always have a purpose. We are quick to say that folktales have a moral or a lesson or a creed. But most of the stories that have survived the ages are told for one purpose only, and that purpose is to say this: "Being human is difficult. Here is some evidence.”
― Lindsey Drager, The Archive of Alternate Endings