Enchanted to read YA

“My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“You're allowed to want the romance parts without the sex parts. Or the sex parts without the romance parts. All of those feelings are valid. You're deserving of a relationship in whatever form you want it.”
― Alison Cochrun, The Charm Offensive

“I didn't get to grow up and pull away from her and bitch about her with my friends and confront her about the things I'd wished she'd done differently and then get older and understand that she had done the best she could and realize that what she had done was pretty damn good and take her fully back into my arms again. Her death had obliterated that. It had obliterated me. It had cut me short at the very heigh of my youthful arrogance. It had forced me to instantly grow up and forgive her every motherly fault at the same time that it kept me forever a child, my life both ended and begun in that premature place where we'd left off. She was my mother, but I was motherless. I was trapped by her, but utterly alone. She would always be the empty bowl that no one could full. I'd have to fill it myself again and again and again.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“He spends way too much time in his own head, but he seems to like it there, so who are we to tell him otherwise? It's not like the real world is necessarily a better place to be.”
― Marieke Nijkamp, At the End of Everything