Phaney

“The child had wanted attention. She had just asked to be noticed. But she was given an assessment. 'What a clever girl!”
― Peter Høeg, Borderliners

“ 'My problem was comparatively simple,' Marcus said. 'One kiss was enough to solve it. But that doesn't mean one kiss is enough to wake everyone up and end every nightmare. [...] That's okay,' Marcus whispered to him. 'One kiss doesn't need to be enough to let you know that the nightmare is really over.'

Liam swallowed rapidly, the world around him becoming embarrassingly misty.

'I'm not going anywhere,' Marcus promised. 'There'll be as many kisses as you need.'

Tilting Liam's head back, Marcus dipped his head and brought their lips together one more time. Liam sighed softly into the kiss and, very slowly, woke up just a little bit more.”
― Kim Dare, With a Kiss

“When people are going to be taken from you anyway, then it would be better if you had never come to care for them.”
― Peter Høeg, Borderliners

“Once you have realised that there is no objective external world to be found; that what you know is only a filtered and processed version, then it is a short step to the thought that, in that case, other people too are nothing but a processed shadow, and but a short step more to the belief that every person must somehow be shut away, isolated behind their own unreliable sensory apparatus. And then the thought springs easily to mind that man is, fundamentally, alone. That the world is made up of disconnected consciousnesses, each isolated within the illusion created by its own senses, floating in a featureless vacuum.
He does not put it so bluntly, but the idea is not far away. That, fundamentally, man is alone.”
― Peter Høeg, Borderliners