Sarah

“It’s like sucking on a rock and pretending it’s candy, talking to this guy.”
― Halle Butler, The New Me

“She moved her finger on the screen to the third row, the second man. Dark curly hair, a long slit of a mouth. Hair slicked and parted down the middle. A skinny, floppy bow tie.

What had been so special about hm? Fiona didn't know what she'd expected, but something more than this. Ranko Novak was worth seventy years of devotion. Ranko Novak was irreplaceable, a hole at the center of Nora's universe. And this was it? A face, two eyes, two ears.

Well, try telling that to someone in love.”
― Rebecca Makkai, The Great Believers

“Lake Michigan, impossibly blue, the morning light bouncing toward the city.
Lake Michigan frozen in sheets you could walk on but wouldn't dare.
Lake Michigan, gray out a high-rise window, indistinguishable from the sky.
Bread, hot from the oven. Or even stale in the restaurant basket, rescued by salty butter.
The Cubs winning the pendant someday. The Cubs winning the Series. The Cubs continuing to lose.
His favorite song, not yet written. His favorite movie, not yet made.
The depth of an oil brushstroke. Chagall's blue window. Picasso's blue man and his guitar.
...
The sound of an old door creaking open. The sound of garlic cooking. The sound of typing. The sound of commercials from the next room, when you were in the kitchen getting a drink. The sound of someone else finishing a shower.
...
Dancing till the floor was an optional landing place. Dancing elbows out, dancing with arms up, dancing in a pool of sweat.
All the books he hadn't started.
The man at Wax Trax! Records with the beautiful eyelashes. The man who sat every Saturday at Nookies, reading the Economist and eating eggs, his ears always strangely red. The ways his own life might have intersected with theirs, given enough time, enough energy, a better universe.
The love of his life. Wasn't there supposed to be a love of his life?
...
His body, his own stupid, slow, hairy body, its ridiculous desires, its aversions, its fears. The way his left knee cracked in the cold.
The sun, the moon, the sky, the stars.
The end of every story.
Oak trees.
Music.
Breath.
...”
― Rebecca Makkai, The Great Believers

“It seems unbelievable that a single decision, a fucking intangible thought, could so violently upset the flesh-and-bone scaffolding of daily life, the steady rhythm of the hours, the predictable, material color of the landscapes that give us nourishment and company.”
― Eva Baltasar, Boulder