Helen

“He was making her feel small and absurdly petulant and, worse yet, she suspected he was right. She always suspected he was right. For a brief irrational moment, she wished she could walk away from him. Then she wished, more rationally, that she could love him without needing him. Need gave him power without his trying; need was the choicelessness she often felt around him.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun

“But she was seventeen now and not actually dumb. She knew that you could love somebody more than anything and still not love the person all that much, if you were busy with other things.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Freedom

“Patty knew, in her heart, that he was wrong in his impression of her. And the mistake she went to go on to make, the really big life mistake, was to go along with Walter's version of her in spite of knowing that it wasn't right. He seemed so certain of her goodness that eventually he wore her down.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Freedom

“A person who longs to leave the place where he lives is an unhappy person.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being