Maggie Rocker

“Before long, he caught a hold of himself and concluded that nothing ever did happen again; to each was given days and chances which wouldn’t come back around. And wasn’t it sweet to be where you were and let it remind you of the past for once, despite the upset, instead of always looking on into the mechanics of the days and the trouble ahead, which might never come.”
― Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

“Eight of the ten commandments are about what thou shalt not. But you can live a whole life not doing any of that stuff and still avoid doing any good. That’s the whole crisis. The rot at the root of everything. The belief that goodness is built on a constructed absence, not-doing. That belief corrupts everything, has everyone with any power sitting on their hands.”
― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!

“The sun was not yet fully overhead in the sky, and everything beautiful was all already ruined.”
― Douglas Stuart, Young Mungo

“In fidelity there are never two of you alone together.

And we sit at tables, and we lie in beds, and we dream our futures, and all the while, there are threads of other dreams woven in, a beach you visited with someone else, the name which you'd like for a girl but it happens to be the name of a girl from school she detested, the part of town you'd like to move to where years ago you kissed another girl at a party, you make all your plans and build all your projects but how many of them are yours, and how many of them are fragments of someone else's life?”
― Lauren Elkin, Scaffolding