Nancy Yager

“We were told what to want: Propaganda was universal. Especially in this country, where the propaganda was that there was none - we were free. But were we? When we were made to value certain lives more than others; when we were made, relentlessly, to want more? What if I had seen through it? What if I had understood that I already had enough?”
― Rachel Khong, Real Americans

“The problem with her pain was that it was invisible. Avery wished she could have given it crutches, some object that made it obvious to everyone around her, but she had learned now that most pain is private.”
― Coco Mellors, Blue Sisters

“When the first wave arrived, barely touching her toes, it was so light and translucent a ripple that you might be forgiven for thinking it insignificant, that it would vanish soon, leaving no trace. But then followed another wave, and the next one, rising as far as her ankles, and the one after that covering her knees, and before you knew it she was immersed in liquid pain, up to her neck, drowning.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“And now from the distance of time when stories are over one in a frame on a dresser one left to remember you left with nowhere to leave to a world where nothing can vanish can vanish from inside the trees or above them the moon blameless as I was as you were call it weather call it something that lives outside measure a lifetime apart a lifetime together are neither forever nor never a lifetime together a lifetime apart one person turns into another forgive past forgive future departure a story continues beyond its erasure we were two oars dividing one water and time cannot sever”
― Kristie Frederick Daugherty, Invisible Strings: 113 Poets Respond to the Songs of Taylor Swift