Juushika

“Then feed, the voice said, and something vast and inhuman, a body like a whale's, pressed against her, near suffocating her, and she held close to it, its rubbery body, its smell of brine and seaweed, the skin rough to the touch, her nose pressed against this huge belly, her mouth watering, her canines slipping out, sinking into the rubbery flesh of it, feeding, feeding on this enormity, this alien entity, too vast and powerful to comprehend, the feed overwhelming her, suffocating her, and in her mind that voice, chuckling as it faded, saying, Why do humans always make the comparison to whales?”
― Lavie Tidhar, Central Station

“I would not for the whole world diminish you. I know it is usual in these circumstances to protest—"I love you for yourself alone"—"I love you essentially"—and as you imply, my dearest, to mean by "you essentially"—lips hands and eyes. But you must know—we do know—that it is not so—dearest, I love your soul and with that your poetry—the grammar and stopping and hurrying syntax of your quick thought—quite as much essentially you as Cleopatra's hopping was essentially hers to delight Antony—more essentially, in that while all lips hands and eyes resemble each other somewhat (though yours are enchanting and also magnetic)—your thought clothed with your words is uniquely you, came with you, would vanish if you vanished—”
― A.S. Byatt, Possession

“The world was full of life, more life than they could hold back with guns or fences; it came into the town at night; it seduced the children and year by year crept closer.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Forty Thousand in Gehenna

“Explain to me again," he begged, "why we are here."

She had told him once before; it had been like listening to a vivid, improbable dream.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Ombria in Shadow