Stephanie

“How entirely undemanding of yourself it was to believe that everything happened to you. And everything was about you. And that your feelings were the only ones that mattered. Worse yet, to afford yourself the role of the victim always—regardless of how grotesquely it required you to twist reality—so that you never had to look in the mirror and admit you were the perpetrator.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Atmosphere

“Julia recognizes it, that edge-of-adulthood progression: tightly wound and hyperconscious teenage preferences - dictated for centuries, inevitably, by a tasteless few - giving way to the awareness that you’re allowed to like some of the things that you’re not supposed to like, that doing so may distinguish you, and that someone else might also like the forbidden thing, or simply witness you liking it and love you for it. Her daughter is piecing together her own interior rule book; this seems as marvelous a development as her learning to crawl.”
― Claire Lombardo

“Remember the deer. There were deer in the park, but not too many. They were not good near the cars. In fact, they were strangely susceptible, oddly vulnerable, especially at night. There were few cars in the park at night, but with their bright lights, blinding moving moonlights, they were visible a million miles away, and so easy to avoid. The deer, though, they were drawn to the lights, and caught by the lights, and killed by the lights. Every few months we found a deer in the road, struck dead, and it would baffle us all. Why did they get so close when the lights and smells and sounds of the cars were so obvious? 'We all have weaknesses,' Freya noted... 'We all have something that blinds us to threats.”
― Dave Eggers

“Remember the deer.” There were deer in the park, but not too many. They were not good near the cars. In fact, they were strangely susceptible, oddly vulnerable, especially at night. There were few cars in the park, but with their bright lights, blinding moving moonlights, they were visible a million miles away, and so easy to avoid. The deer, though, they were drawn to the lights, and caught by the lights, and killed by the lights. Every few months, we would find a deer in the road, struck dead, and it would baffle us. Why did they get so close when the lights and the sounds and the smells of the cars were so obvious? “We all have weaknesses,” Freya noted… “We all have something that blinds us to threats.”
― Dave Eggers