Elly

“That's the awful part about it: the worst days of your life start out just like any other.”
― Jay Kristoff, Empire of the Vampire

“I looked at him. There was so much I wanted to ask him, so much I wanted to say; but somehow I knew there wasn't time and even if there was, that it was all, somehow, beside the point.
"Are you happy here?" I said at last.
He considered this for a moment. "Not particularly," he said.
"But you're not very happy where you are, either.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“The day you are not a fire,” he said, “is the day the earth will fall still for me.”
― Olivie Blake, The Atlas Six

“Autumn comes early to the foot of the Slovenian Alps. Even before September, the abundant harvests are followed by a sudden poignant rain that lasts for days and brings down leaves in the lanes of the village. Now, in my fifties, I find myself wandering that direction every few years, reliving my first glimpse of the Slovenian countryside.
This is old country. Every autumn mellows it a little more, in aeternum, each beginning with the same three colors: a green landscape, two or three yellow leaves falling through a gray afternoon.
I suppose the Romans - who left their walls here and their gargantuan arenas to the west, on the coast - saw the same autumn and gave the same shiver. When my father's car swung through the gates of the oldest of Julian cities, I hugged myself.
For the first time, I had been struck by the excitement of the traveler who looks history in her subtle face.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, The Historian