Mikayla Nicholson

“Alas! I had not then learned the measure of "man's inhumanity to man," nor to what limitless extent of wickedness he will go for the love of gain”
― Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave

“Were they aware, in the intensity of their embrace, of something slightly ridiculous about this tableau, something almost comical, as someone nearby sneezed violently into a crumpled tissue; as a dirty discarded plastic bottle scuttled along the platform under a breath of wind; as a mechanised billboard on the station wall rotated from an advertisement for hair products to an advertisement for car insurance; as life in its ordinariness and even ugly vulgarity imposed itself everywhere all around them? Or were they in this moment unaware, or something more than unaware—were they somehow invulnerable to, untouched by, vulgarity and ugliness, glancing for a moment into something deeper, something concealed beneath the surface of life, not unreality but a hidden reality: the presence at all times, in all places, of a beautiful world?”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

“The best way was to make something, silently, secretly, and then have it appear in the world in all of its magnificent and surprising glory. Like birth, she thought. To push a thing from the most private part of yourself. To have it scream upon its arrival. To have it be perfect and glorious, to not have to say a word about it, to simply hold it in your arms, to extend it to the world with just one word of imploration: look.”
― Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch

“I'm the worst person in the world"
"No, you're not." Patrick's hand came down in a fist and he hit the arm of the sofa. "You're not the best person in the world either, which is what you really think. You're the same as everybody else. But that's harder for you, isn't it. You'd rather be one or the other. The idea that you might be ordinary is unbearable.”
― Meg Mason, Sorrow and Bliss