Sandhya Manian

“He regretted his surliness when she had refused. She was the only person he’d met in his adult life who had any understanding of his past, the only woman he wanted to remain connected to. He didn’t want to leave it up to chance to find her again, didn’t want to share her with another man. That last day in Volterra he had searched for a way to tell her these things. She had not accused him, as Franca had, of his own cowardice, of his inability to form attachments. But Hema’s refusal to accuse him made him feel worse, and without her he was lost.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Unaccustomed Earth

“But luxury has never appealed to me, I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.”
― Daphne du Maurier

“She was still under the spell of her infatuation. She had tried to forget him, realizing the inutility of remembering. But the thought of him was like an obsession, ever pressing itself upon her. It was not that she dwelt upon details of their acquaintance, or recalled in any special or peculiar way his personality; it was his being, his existence, which dominated her thought, fading sometimes as if it would melt into the mist of the forgotten, reviving again with an intensity which filled her with an incomprehensible longing.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains.”
― Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire