Julie Combs

“Tonight the rain feels so meek and muted that brushing it away with a hand might make it stop. It lacks conviction, has lost its vigor. Don't bother with umbrellas, it seems to say. I'm about to stop anyway, my heart's not in it tonight.”
― André Aciman, Enigma Variations

“The desire to describe voice, gesture, skin color, is a desire to eat, take over, make into part of the pattern. I am happy every time to see a writer fail at this. I am happy every time to see real personhood resist our tricks. I am happy to see bodies insist that they are not shut up in this book, they are elsewhere. The tomb is empty, rejoice, he is not here. •”
― Patricia Lockwood, Priestdaddy: A Memoir

“The lifers
who, even seven states away, are the porches
where we land.”
― Ellen Dore Watson

“Occasionally you'll say "Excuse me" when I happen to stand in your way, and "Thank you" when your ball drifts into my court and I hurl it back to you. With these few words, I find comfort in false hopes and hope in false starts. I'll coddle anything instead of nothing. Even thinking that nothing can come of nothing gives me a leg to stand on, something to consider when I wake up in the middle of the night and can see nothing, not the blackout in my life, not the screen, not the cellar, not even hope and false comforts -just the joy of your imagined limb touching mine. I prefer the illusion of perpetual fasting to the certainty of famine. I have, I think, what's called a broken heart.”
― André Aciman, Enigma Variations