333 books
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1,778 voters
Dareen
https://www.goodreads.com/dareenkwaik
Look what a story can do, those years showed me. Look how it can keep you stuck—patterns of longing, heartbreak, addiction—and look how it can liberate you.
“I understood then, the immense honor it is to hurt like she does. To have loved someone so much that the taste of maple syrup can make you cry and laugh at the same time.”
― Happy Place
― Happy Place
“Suddenly we’re not kids anymore, and it feels like it happened overnight, so fast I didn’t have time to notice, to let go of everything that used to matter so much, to see that the old wounds that once felt like gut-level lacerations have faded to small white scars, mixed in among the stretch marks and sunspots and little divots where time has grazed against my body.
I’ve put so much time and distance between myself and that lonely girl, and what does it matter? Here is a piece of my past, right in front of me, miles away from home. You can’t outrun yourself. Not your history, not your fears, not the parts of yourself you’re worried are wrong.”
― People We Meet on Vacation
I’ve put so much time and distance between myself and that lonely girl, and what does it matter? Here is a piece of my past, right in front of me, miles away from home. You can’t outrun yourself. Not your history, not your fears, not the parts of yourself you’re worried are wrong.”
― People We Meet on Vacation
“My best friends taught me a new kind of quiet, the peaceful stillness of knowing one another so well you don’t need to fill the space. And a new kind of loud: noise as a celebration, as the overflow of joy at being alive, here, now.”
― Happy Place
― Happy Place
“There aren't words vast or specific enough to capture the ecstasy and the ache and love and fear I feel just looking at him now.”
― People We Meet on Vacation
― People We Meet on Vacation
“I wish I could bottle this moment and wear it as a perfume. It would always be with me. Everywhere I went, he’d be there too, and so I’d always feel like myself.”
― People We Meet on Vacation
― People We Meet on Vacation
Dareen’s 2025 Year in Books
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