Eloise

“Maybe it's the gay friends I have but they're all like... Sex! Exclamation mark exclamation mark! Which is extremely wonderful for them - I'm not saying they should be any other way - but. They're good at casual sex. I can't even imagine having it. I don't think any of my friends could put up with dating a guy who doesn't want to have sex. It's hard enough feeling like you're an outsider with most people because you're gay! And so you have to work harder to find your people. But you do it, you meet other gay guys, you manage to become friends with some of them, and then it still turns out you don't fit in. You're still different. What do you do then?”
― Cynthia So, If You Still Recognise Me

“It felt like a puzzle, mostly put together but with a piece missing, waiting to be filled. There were plenty of pieces to fill it- gay, straight, bisexual- but none fit quite right. Sometimes I thought I could make one fit if I pressed hard enough, but it would never lie flat.
The word asexual took the puzzle piece and turned it, letting it click into place where before it'd been better to just leave the space empty. I wasn't broken. I wasn't empty. I wasn't nothing at all. Just a little differently shaped.”
― Amanda DeWitt, Aces Wild: A Heist

“But with Nico … It’s hard, Persephone. I want the best for him, and he seems to disappear into his darkness, like he’s hiding in a place where he doesn’t want my light.’

‘Then why not offer him your darkness?”
― Rick Riordan, The Sun and the Star

“Hey, don’t do that.’ Will touched Nico’s face, stared into his dark eyes.
‘You survived. You continue to survive. You’ve been through more in your fifteen years than most people will endure in an entire lifetime.’
Nico looked away, but Will knew this grumpy ball of darkness – his grumpy ball of darkness – and he refused to let Nico off the hook.
‘I don’t always understand you, Nico,’ he said, ‘but I do know that you’re resilient. And in that sense you are just like this garden.”
― Rick Riordan, The Sun and the Star