Joshua Dowling

“I stopped watching for ridicule, the scorpion's tail hidden in his words. He said what he meant; he was puzzled if you did not. Some people might have mistaken this for simplicity. But is it not a sort of genius to cut always to the heart?”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“Perhaps he is a fool or a coward but almost everybody is one or the other and most people are both.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“Olanna felt the slow sadness of missing a person who was still there.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun

“We reached for each other, and I thought of how many nights I had lain awake loving him in silence.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles