Olivia

“Listen,' someone whispers into my ear. 'Listen to me.'
Am I dead?
'Listen,' the voice whispers. 'In some countries, you kill a monster when it's born. Other places, you kill it only when it kills someone else. Other places, you let it go, out into the forest or the sea, and it lives there forever, calling for others of its kind. Listen to me, it cries. Maybe it's just alone.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, The Mere Wife

“People who read are hiders. They hide who they are. People who hide don’t always like who they are.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“When you stumble on something you didn’t know that somebody else felt too, you think, oh my gosh, I’m not the only one. That is a falling in love – it’s the self recognized in someone else. A union of souls.”
― Natasha Lunn, Conversations on Love: Lovers, Strangers, Parents, Friends, Endings, Beginnings

“he is old enough now to know happiness for what it is: brief and fleeting, not a state to strive for, to seek to live in, but to catch when it comes, and to hold on to for as long as you can.”
― Laura Barnett, The Versions of Us