Allie Barnard

“You won’t understand what I mean now, but someday you will: the only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are—not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving—and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and to try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad—or good—it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all. But the best, as well.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“Menelaus, if you are really going to kill her, \ Then my blessing go with you, but you must do it now, \ Before her looks so twist the strings of your heart \ That they turn your mind; for her eyes are like armies, \ And where her glances fall, there cities burn, / Until the dust of their ashes is blown \ By her sighs. I know her, Menelaus, \ And so do you. And all those who know her suffer.”
― Neil Curry, The Trojan Women - Helen - The Bacchae

“Fairness is for happy people, for people who have been lucky enough to have lived a life defined more by certainties than by ambiguities.
Right and wrong, however, are for—well, not unhappy people, maybe, but scarred people; scared people.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life