Dena
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“Don't try to be useful. Try to be yourself: that is enough & that makes all the difference.”
― Manuscript Found in Accra
― Manuscript Found in Accra
“All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.”
― The Five People You Meet in Heaven
― The Five People You Meet in Heaven
“I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was hurricane.”
― Looking for Alaska
― Looking for Alaska
“The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.”
― Looking for Alaska
― Looking for Alaska
“What is an "instant" death anyway? How long is an instant? Is it one second? Ten? The pain of those seconds must have been awful as her heart burst and her lungs collapsed and there was no air and no blood to her brain and only raw panic. What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding pain feels particularly instantaneous.”
― Looking for Alaska
― Looking for Alaska
Dena’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Dena’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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