ASHLEY

“Breath, dreams, silence, invincible calm… you will triumph.”
― Miriam Toews, All My Puny Sorrows

“If there is nothing but what we make in this world, brothers, let us make good.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Friends

“And sometimes you fall in love that way, when you’re drowning in a world of pain.

It’s not a happy love.

It’s just whoever manages not to hurt you all the time. You think they must be the best the world has to offer. The little window of time you aren’t in pain can seem like happiness.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“We are the blur in the windows of your trains and minivans, your Greyhounds, our faces mangled by wind and speed like castaway Munch paintings. The only things we share with the city are the ambulances, being close enough to Hartford for them to come fetch us when we’re near dead or rattling away on steel gurneys without next of kin. We live on the edges but die in the heart of the state. We pay taxes on every check to stand on the sinking banks of a river that becomes the morgue of our dreams.”
― Ocean Vuong, The Emperor of Gladness