Mary

“Fear was when you wandered into a cellar and worried that the door would close shut. Despair was when the door closed and locked behind you.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“There are poisons that blind you, and poisons that open your eyes.”
― August Strindberg, The ghost sonata

“Only a country that feels invulnerable can afford political turmoil as entertainment.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“...that the Musgroves had had the ill fortune of a very troublesome, hopeless son; and the good fortune to lose him before he reached his twentieth year; that he had been sent to sea, because he was stupid and unmanageable on shore; that he had been very little cared for at any time by his family, though quite as much as he deserved; seldom heard of, and scarcely at all regretted... He had, in fact, though his sisters were now doing all they could for him, by calling him 'poor Richard,' been nothing better than a thick-headed, unfeeling, unprofitable Dick Musgrove, who had never done anything to entitle himself to more than the abbreviation of his name, living or dead.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion