keelyn

“The men repeatedly request that she play Elgar’s “Nimrod” even though it appears to affect them powerfully. She finds it hard to watch them fight to maintain their composure as the kettledrums roll and the score ascends to its heights. It must cause them something close to agony. Perhaps, she thinks, that is what they require: something that allows them to follow their pain as it rises, in its most beautifully orchestrated form— one that insists on the inevitability of whatever will come, and then releases them, gently, with that knowledge. It is not comfort it gives them, she realizes, but acceptance; not an anaesthetizing of sorrow, but a clear articulation of it,”
― Joanna Quinn, The Whalebone Theatre

“He couldn't believe it was only Wednesday. And it was made worse when he realized it was actually Tuesday.”
― T.J. Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea

“She wished Martin hadn't taken his Encyclopaedia Britannica with him when they split up. She missed that more than she missed him.”
― Jenny Diski, The Vanishing Princess

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar