Cariadne

“This is the least sensible way to solve your problems, she'd said to me the last time I'd given her a fake-dating book. I can think of at least forty-seven better ways these two - she'd smacked the book so hard I thought I saw it flinch - could have solved their problem than pretending to be in a relationship.”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“Sincerity, my research had taught me, was often seen as a vulnerability. To earnestly express a feeling was a weakness. It was part of the reason people—including, but not limited to, Professor Christian Fisher—liked to hang shit on romance novels. There was something inherently earnest at their heart: a sincere love and hope and joy that readers often reacted to with the same feelings, a delicate flower that provoked some people to want to crush it.”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“And honestly, I think you're doing a lot of things right.”
― Leslie North, How to Defy Your Boss

“There was a famous narrative theorist named Paul Ricœur who distinguished between "clock time" and "human time." Clock time was measured in seconds, minutes, hours, days: the things we think of as the basic building blocks of time. Human time, though, was measured in events: the basic building blocks of story - and thus, because humans love nothing more than to narrativize their own experiences, of our lives.”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair