Randall-Grace Johnson

“He put his hands on my hips. He was shy, all of a sudden. There was a second of feeling like two teenagers who had been set up by their friends at the school disco. We exchanged a well, look at us! expression, and he tilted his head, very slightly, to kiss me. And the kiss was like—what was it like? It was like finding your favourite pair of boots under the bed. It was like finding them on the last day of your lease, the boxes already in the van, having assumed that they must have been left at an ex-lover’s house, or simply vanished by your own carelessness. Oh, these. Oh. Oh. I love these. When I finally stopped kissing him, I put my arms around his waist, and laid my head on his shoulder. My nose dug deep to find the old smell, my hands on the rough denim of his jacket. I had missed him so much, and I hadn’t even known it. “Carey,” I said. “Carey, Carey, Carey.” “Darling,” he replied. “I think you’re a bit old to call me by my last name.” And so now, everyone I love is called James.”
― Caroline O'Donoghue, The Rachel Incident

“I couldn't imagine living the way she lived, free, like an exposed wire ready and willing to touch whatever it touched. I couldn't imagine being willing, and even after those few stolen moments of psychedelic transcendence, nonaddictive, harmless, and, yes, euphoric, I still couldn't imagine being free.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom

“These were sad people, and for the world I wanted to think of them as decent. Perhaps they were decent enough, but the place made them so offensive to me that all who lived there became there.”
― Percival Everett, I Am Not Sidney Poitier

“That had probably been written by a professor. I recognized the professor's characteristic delight at not imparting information.”
― Elif Batuman, Either/Or