Diana

“I cross to her and cup her face in my hands. “If we were different people in different circumstances, I would get down on my knees and beg you to stay at the end of the winter. I would move heaven and earth and the Underworld itself to keep you with me.” She blinks those big hazel eyes at me and licks her lips. “If…” She sounds so hesitant, I simultaneously want to gather her into my arms and don’t want to move in case she never finishes that sentence. She doesn’t leave me hanging long. “If we were different people, you wouldn’t have to beg. I’d plant my roots right here in this house, and it would take a catastrophic event to make me walk away.”
― Katee Robert, Neon Gods

“Glory and tragedy, courage and stupidity - one set of truths didn't negate the other. For war was contradiction, as was the history of America.”
― Barack Obama, A Promised Land

“Do you want to have kids?” I ask. “Sometimes,” he says. “When I’m feeling optimistic.” I bump sideways into him, the skin of our arms sticking slightly from the heat. “Does that happen often?” He looks down his shoulder at me with a slight smirk. “Not often, no.” “So the rest of the time,” I say, “when you’re not feeling optimistic, what do you think?” “The rest of the time …” Another long exhale, his eyes straight ahead as we go back to ambling down the block. “The rest of the time, I think, what if the polar ice caps keep melting? What if medical care keeps getting more expensive, and social security runs out, and housing prices keep rising while minimum wage doesn’t, and what if they resent me for bringing them into all of this? “What if they just hate me? Not because of the state of the world, but just because they hate me. Or what if they’re sick? What if they join a cult, and I can’t convince them to come home? What if they start a cult? What if they get into some heinous shit, and I can’t love them anymore—or worse, I keep loving them even though I can’t change anything? “What if there’s another world war? Or what if … what if everything else goes right, but at the end of my life, they’re sitting in hospice with me …” His voice thickens uncharacteristically, wavering just the slightest bit. “And there are things they wish they could say to me, or hear from me, but I don’t remember who I am, let alone who they are. What if they have to care for me, for years, after I’ve stopped calling them by their nicknames or telling them I love them?”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“I don’t know how to be silent when my heart is speaking.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights