Effi

“And if one day,' she said, really crying now, 'you look back and you feel bad for being so angry, if you feel bad for being so angry at me that you couldn't even speak to me, then you have to know, Conor, you have to that is was okay. It was okay. That I knew. I know, okay? I know everything you need to tell me without you having to say it out loud.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“—if a painting really works down in your heart and changes the way you see, and think, and feel, you don’t think, ‘oh, I love this picture because it’s universal.’ ‘I love this painting because it speaks to all mankind.’ That’s not the reason anyone loves a piece of art. It’s a secret whisper from an alleyway. Psst, you. Hey kid. Yes you.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“Finnick and I sit for a long time in silence, watching the knots bloom and vanish, before I can ask, 'How do you bear it?'
Finnick looks at me in disbelief. 'I don't, Katniss! Obviously, I don't. I drag myself out of nightmares each morning and find there's no relief in waking.'
Something in my expression stops him.
'Better not give in to it. It takes ten times as long to put yourself together as it does to fall apart.'
Well, he must know. I take a deep breath, forcing myself back into one piece.”
― Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay

“This homosexual dream of perfect metaphysical union is not so much a reflected heterosexual ideal as it is the compensation for having wept in the darkness.”
― Thomas E. Yingling, Hart Crane and the Homosexual Text: New Thresholds, New Anatomies