Clive

“You can’t come back to something that is gone.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

“at every moment in time, next to the things it seems natural to do and say, and next to the ones we’re told to think—no less by books or ads in the métro than by funny stories—are other things that society hushes up without knowing it is doing so. thus it condemns to lonely suffering all the people who feel but cannot name these things. then the silence breaks, little by little, or suddenly one day, and words burst forth, recognized at last, while underneath other silences start to form.”
― Annie Ernaux, Les Années

“I know that loneliness cannot be fully eradicated by the presence of another; but I also know that a companion is a shield, and without another person, loneliness steals in, a phantom seeping through the windows and down your throat, filling you with a sorrow nothing can answer. I cannot promise that my granddaughter won't be lonely, but I have prevented her from being alone. I have made certain that her life will have a witness.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, To Paradise

“the fact that there are times, maybe the most unlikely times, that you realize you're simply thrilled to be alive, and what a great piece of luck it is just to be a part of things, to have a body, so you can feel and see and walk the earth, for just a little while”
― Lucy Ellmann, Ducks, Newburyport