Dayton

“There will be other lives.
There will be other lives for nervous boys with sweaty palms, for bittersweet fumblings in the backseats of cars, for caps and gowns in royal blue and crimson, for mothers clasping pretty pearl necklaces around daughters' unlined necks, for your full name read aloud in an auditorium, for brand-new suitcases transporting you to strange new people in strange new lands.
And there will be other lives for unpaid debts, for one-night stands, for Prague and Paris, for painful shoes with pointy toes, for indecision and revisions.
And there will be other lives for fathers walking daughters down aisles.
And there will be other lives for sweet babies with skin like milk.
And there will be other lives for a man you don't recognize, for a face in a mirror that is no longer yours, for the funerals of intimates, for shrinking, for teeth that fall out, for hair on your chin, for forgetting everything. Everything.
Oh, there are so many lives. How we wish we could live them concurrently instead of one by one by one. We could select the best pieces of each, stringing them together like a strand of pearls. But that's not how it works. A human's life is a beautiful mess.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Elsewhere

“You ever laughed so hard
nobody in the world could hurt you for a minute,
no matter what they tried to do to you?”
― Virginia Euwer Wolff, Make Lemonade

“I just figured out why someone would want to make the first mirror... I think some lover wanted his beloved to see how she appeared to him. He wanted her to be able to see herself the way that he did.”
― Julia Hoban, Willow

“Janie: Did you ever sell drugs?
Cabel: Yes. Pot. Ninth and tenth grade. I was, uh...rather troubled back then.
Janie: Why did you stop?
Cabel: Got busted, and Captain made me a better deal. Janie: So you've been a narc since then? Cabel: I cringe at your terminology.”
― Lisa McMann, Wake