James Sullivan

“Finally, if you're wondering if it counts and it feels like it counts, it counts.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Emergency Contact

“People alone, trapped, country people, all looked at the sky, I knew. It was the way out somehow, that sky, but it was also the steady, changeless witness to the after and before one's decisions—it witnessed all the deaths that took people away to other worlds—and so people had a tendency to talk to it. [...] I wondered whether I would ever be in love with a boy. Would I? Why not? Why not? Right then and there I vowed and dared and bet that sky and the trees that I would. [...] It would be a boy very far away—and I would go there someday and find him. He would just be there. And I would love him. And he would love me. And we would simply be there together, loving like that, in that place, wherever it was. I had a whole life ahead. I had patience and faith and a headful o songs.”
― Lorrie Moore, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?

“Come over,’ he said. ‘I’ll order in Chinese.’
‘You speak Chinese now?’
‘Funny guy, Libor. Be here at eight.’
‘You sure you’re up for it?’
‘I’m a philosopher, I’m not sure about anything.’..”
― Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question

“Nothing has changed. It’s still very simple. I miss him. I miss him every day. I miss him very much.
But how would it be if that feeling was gone?
I would not want that to happen.
I told the shrink: it would not make me happy at all not to miss him anymore.”
― Sigrid Nunez, The Friend