Emma

“I'm twenty-six," she said, as if it were bad news she had received only recently. "It isn't the age I feel like."

"What age do you feel like?"

"Nineteen -- like you."

But, to me, nineteen still felt old and somehow alien to who I was. It occurred to me that it might take more than a year -- maybe as many as seven years -- to learn to feel nineteen.”
― Elif Batuman, The Idiot

“remember wondering if this story was an analogy about people who stay in places or relationships or whatever situations longer than they should because they’re afraid of letting go or moving on or the unknown, or how people hold on to things because they miss what the thing was even if that isn’t what that same thing is now.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea

“They asked if I thought he would have done something - like jumped-off-a-bridge something - and I said I didn't think so, but I also think most of us are two steps away from jumping off something most of the time and you never know if the next day is going to push you in one way or another.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea

“For a while I was looking for a person but I didn't find them and after that I was looking for myself. Now that I've found me I'm back to exploring, which is what I was doing in the first place before I was doing anything else and I think I was supposed to be exploring all along.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea