Jakob

“I don't know then that one day I won't be seventeen. I don't know that youth doesn't last, that it's only a moment, and then it disappears and by the time you finally realize it, it's too late. It's finished, vanished, lost. There are some around me who can sense it; the adults repeat it constantly but I don't listen. Their words roll over me but don't stick. Like water off the feathers of a duck's back. I'm an idiot. An easygoing idiot.”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me

“When I’m with Joe none of this matters. I think he is a reporter because he likes to talk to people. Wherever we go we end up talking to strangers. And liking them.
I don’t think I ever really liked the world until I met him. My parents don’t like the world, or me, or they would trust me.”
― Lucia Berlin, A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

“Fear, poverty, alcoholism, loneliness are terminal illnesses. Emergencies, in fact.”
― Lucia Berlin, A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

“No sé que nunca volveré a tener diecisiete años, no sé que la juventud vuela, que apenas dura un instante, que desaparece enseguida y cuando te das cuenta ya es demasiado tarde, ya se ha terminado, se ha volatilizado, la has perdido”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me