Meagan Sullivan

“Viola had a harrowing story about riding a bicycle west out of the burnt-out ruins of a Connecticut suburb, aged fifteen, harboring vague notions of California but set upon by passersby long before she got there, grievously harmed, joining up with other half feral teenagers in a marauding gang and then slipping away from them, walking alone for a hundred miles, whispering French to herself because all the horror in her life had transpired in English and she thought switching languages might save her, wandering into a town through which the Symphony passed five years later.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

“My wife's eyes sought mine for the old recognition, but found there a difference that would have been less nightmarish had it been less slight.”
― Glen Duncan, The Last Werewolf

“I was taking a noon shift at Vi's desk when in wandered a plump little woman perspiring beneath a poppy-wreathed hat. I recognized the hat as one I had seen around the station several times, although the lady under it was the nondescript variety who would be lost in a crowd of three.”
― Jane Woodfin, Of Mikes and Men

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room