John

“Won’t most of us die in fairly unclimactic ways, our passing unremarked by almost everyone, our deaths becoming plot points in the narratives of the people around us?”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“I’m old because I’m not dead”
― Henry Hoke, Open Throat

“I’d always thought it was a silly question, why I wanted to stay here, in this house. This house was everything I’d ever wanted. Sure, it wasn’t perfect, but sometimes it actually was. Or at least as close as anything could come to perfect in this life, which admittedly was not very close. It wasn’t horrible every single day—so few things ever are—and when it wasn’t horrible, it was almost lovely. I knew how to survive here, and I always had the sense that if I just survived long enough, if I just played by the rules well enough, I could make it into a perfect home once and for all. I just needed to work a little harder. I loved this house. And you didn’t give up on the things you loved.”
― Carissa Orlando, The September House

“We're all greedy, but children make it easier to be. We feel it's only right to give them everything we can grab, even when you know that anything you feed your own child still comes out of someone else's mouth.”
― Naomi Novik, The Golden Enclaves