Jasmine Dove

“If he silently decides not to say something when they’re talking, Marianne will ask ‘what?’ within one or two seconds. This ‘what?’ question seems to him to contain so much: not just the forensic attentiveness to his silences that allows her to ask in the first place, but a desire for total communication, a sense that anything unsaid is an unwelcome interruption between them.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“One is the left shoe and the other is the right. They are the same but not interchangeable.”
― Tayari Jones, An American Marriage

“How quickly contempt can dissipate when faced with the pathetic humanness of another person. You see inside them for even the briefest moment and suddenly empathy blows through. A dark sky cleared by a hard rain.”
― Stephen Markley, Ohio

“Now she settled into the dailiness of grief—not that first piercing stab but the steady, persistent ache of it, the absence that feels like a presence.”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance