sophie

“He stretches his legs out underneath the table and checks Facebook on his phone. It tells him things he doesn’t need to know about people he hasn’t seen in years. He absorbs their aggressively worded opinions and quasi-political hate-speak. He sees a photograph of his ex-girlfriend with her new boyfriend smiling at a picnic and he realises, with a strange cascade of emptiness, that she is pregnant and wearing an engagement ring. The comments are jubilant. He reads every word before he forces himself to put his phone down. A loneliness descends. He feels its familiar talons grabbing him violently out of his chair and hanging him, swinging, up by the ceiling. Pete”
― Kate Tempest, The Bricks that Built the Houses: A Novel

“I don’t so much fear death as I do wasting life.” Oliver Sacks”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“I'm always happy," Sasha said. "Sometimes I just forget.”
― Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

“O: 'The most we can do is to write - intelligently, creatively, critically, evocatively - about what it is like living in the world at this time”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me