Jasmine

“Travel far enough, you meet yourself.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Apples are kissing other apples. Gray cats are kissing other gray cats. Trees are kissing trees. You and I are not kissing. We work in an office together. We are both married to other people. It is okay because we only have ideas, you and I, about whether we should kiss or not. These ideas are both good and bad, probably.
At work, we do not say these words aloud but make elaborate diagrams for one another. You write these words: Kissing you would be like this, and draw a picture of two butterflies being struck by lightning. I stare at it and wonder if you may be right. I do my own drawing and write, Kissing you would be like this, and sketch a picture of a man made of ice kissing a woman who is actually a stove. We have made hundreds of these drawings. We do not actually do any work.”
― Joe Meno, Demons in the Spring

“There's nothing wrong with her except she's completely fucked up.”
― Gary Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story

“Occasionally, in the stillness of a taxi or an airplane, she would catalog the pleasures she had lost. Cigarettes. Chewing gum. Strong mint toothpaste. Any food with hard edges or sharp corners that could pierce or abrade the inside of her mouth: potato chips, croutons, crunchy peanut butter. Any food that was more than infinitesimally, protozoically, spicy or tangy or salty or acidic: pesto or Worcestershire sauce, wasabi or anchovies, tomato juice or movie-theater popcorn. Certain pamphlets and magazines whose paper carried a caustic wafting chemical scent she could taste as she turned the pages. Perfume. Incense. Library books. Long hours of easy conversation. The ability to lick an envelope without worrying that the glue had irritated her mouth. The knowledge that if she heard a song she liked, she could sing along to it in all her dreadful jubilant tunelessness. The faith that if she bit her tongue, she would soon feel better rather than worse.”
― Kevin Brockmeier, The Illumination