Jennie

“I can’t lose the thing I’ve held onto for so long, you know?” My face twists up from the pain of pushing it out. “I just really need it to be a love story, you know? I really, really need it to be that.”
“I know,” she says.
“Because if it isn’t a love story, then what is it”? I look to her glassy eyes, her face of wide open empathy. “It’s my life,” I say. “This has been my whole life.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“In the days that followed, I thought about grief. How nothing and nobody can prepare you for it. People tell you their stories, but until you experience it for yourself you cannot possibly understand. There’s no going around it, or under, or over it - you’ve got to go through it. It will hit you in waves so enormous that you are smacked against the shore. It will permeate the very fabric of your life so that everything you do is stained by it. Every moment, good or bad, is steeped in sadness for a while. Even the nice moments - the achievements and successes - are tinged with the knowledge that someone or something is missing.”
― Hazel Hayes, Out of Love

“Sometimes she craved a little danger. And that was why she had book club.”
― Grady Hendrix, The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

“No. No, Bobbi. You try to understand yourself. You think about it, try to say it. And it takes you forever because you use so many words. But you're not open-- not really. You don't let yourself feel, and then do something about it. You don't listen to your heart. You have to consider everything, think about it for a year or two, take one little step at a time. You must be careful or God will turn you into a pillar of salt. You spend your whole life looking behind you.”
― Dean Hughes, As Long As I Have You