Lauren Siegert

“That’s the only real life, the only thing that makes you know you’re alive - the backward ache. That’s what music is. The trouble - for me - is that at some stage I realized those miracles, those aches, they have a history. They're not private. The music's always about what someone's lost. That's what you hear, when it's good: the worlds people lost, the ones they want back. And once you hear it that way, you can't avoid it - that it's somehow about justice.”
― Adam Haslett, Imagine Me Gone

“I turned toward her with red, puffy eyes. Her own eyes widened with concern, and she froze as she watched me walk into the kitchen, like she was waiting for me to crumple onto the floor and shatter into pieces.

“I’m fine,” I said. “It’s an emotional book. I’m just getting a glass of water.” I reached for the tequila.

She got up and followed me into the kitchen. “That’s not water.”

“And?”

“It’s ten a.m.”

“And?”

“You look like you’ve been crying for an hour straight . . . and you’re hitting the hard stuff at—and I repeat—ten a.m.”

“Cara, you have the most amazing powers of perception.” I looked at the bottle in one hand and the glass in the other, shrugged, set the glass down, and headed back to my room with the bottle only.

“I’m worried about you,” Cara called out as I walked away.

“I’m fine. Just gonna sit in here, read, and have myself a little mental health day.” I turned and smiled and then locked myself in my room.

“Mental health days don’t usually involve tequila at ten a.m.!” she yelled through the door.

“I’m fine!”
― Renee Carlino, Swear on This Life

“Anything that grows closely enough to what it loves will eventually share the same roots. We can talk about loss, we can treat it and give it time, but biology still forces us to live according to certain rules: plants that are split down the middle don't heal, they die.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“I believe we have two lives. The life we learn with, and the life we live with after that.”
― David Rosenfelt, Open and Shut