Vera Marsova

“He didn’t want to leave. It felt like young love, I thought—responsibilities looming, the mounting anxiety of your life building while you clung, lolling pointlessly in bed, to a new someone who gave you a sad and fearful pleasure.”
― Julia May Jonas, Vladimir

“Let me drum this into your eejit head. The good Lord gets us over people when we get the fuck away. Cut ties. Stop dilly-dallying into their lives like a semi-neglectful godparent. Foolishness.”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

“As far as I know, Archie was your first serious relationship,’ Vivian continued. ‘And Archie thought you should put up with his nonsense, because that’s love. Love is letting people hurt you. Archie must have learned it from someone, too. We’re all taught it. But some of us get over it – and some of us terrorise the general population well into our twenties and beyond.”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

“Still, that’s what I mean when I say I like Grellan. He can show me how to be a man without having this destroy-or-be-destroyed thing. And once you know how to do it, it doesn’t take much work. It’s intrinsically rewarding, so it runs itself: being nice. I look at Grellan and on some level I think, if I were to decide the meaning of life is happiness, and if I stopped trying to be better than people, and if I tried to love them instead – it would be an investment. I’d get to be Grellan by Grellan’s age.”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple