mars

“She clenches her eyelids and presses her fists into her temples, as if to physically crush this false conviction that Neil is in some way realer than everyone else, that he is somehow the axis of her life and the only one who can “save” her and his opinion of her constitutes her entire worth, having
staked exclusive mining rights to her happiness, because of the irreplicable
circumstances of how they knew each other, when at the bottommost level of truth she knows he’s just . . . another . . . fucking . . . guy.”
― Tony Tulathimutte, Rejection

“As long as you are alive, it is never too late to be found.”
― Coco Mellors, Blue Sisters

“Sam looked at her outstretched hand, which he knew as well as any hand except his own---the precise pattern of the lines that made up the grid of her palm, the slim fingers with the purplish veins at the knuckles, the particular creamy olive hue of her skin, her delicate wrist, pinkish, with a penumbral callus that must have come from Dov, the white gold bracelet she wore that he knew had been a gift from Freda on her twelfth birthday. How could she honestly think he wouldn't know about the handcuffs? He had spent hours sitting next to her, playing games and then making them, staring at her hands as her fingers flew across a keyboard or jabbed at a controller. Tell me I don't know you, Sam thought. Tell me I don't know you when I could draw both sides of this hand, your hand, from memory.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“A reminder that there are things in life so valuable that you must risk the pain of losing them for the joy of briefly having them.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers