Justine

“What do you mean to do with Maia when you do find her?” the professor asked that night.
“Take her back to the Keminskys and never let her out of my sight again,” said Miss Minton.
“She may not find it easy.”
“Why on earth not? The Keminskys are the kindest people in the world.”
“Yes. But she has tasted freedom.”
― Eva Ibbotson, Journey to the River Sea

“Blue remained secretly hopeful that, somewhere out there in the world, there were other odd people like her.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys

“There was something wrong with me.

The human body doesn’t want to get hurt. We’re programmed to feel squeamish at the sight of blood. Pain is a careful orchestration of chemical processes so that we keep our body alive. Studies have shown that people born with congenital analgesia — the inability to feel pain — bite off the tips of their tongues and scratch holes in their eyes and break bones.

We are a wonder of checks and balances to keep on running.

The human body doesn’t want to get hurt.

There was something wrong with me, because sometimes I didn’t care. There was something wrong with me, because sometimes I wanted it.

We fear death; we fear the void; we scrabble to keep our pulses.

I was the void.

What are you afraid of? Nothing.

You are not doing this you are not doing this you are not doing this

But my eyes were already clawing over the bathroom for ways out.

Trust you?

I wasn’t meant to live, probably. This was why I was wired this way. Biology formed me and then took a look and wondered what the hell it was thinking and put in a mental fail-safe.

In case of emergency pull cord.

I was crouching by the wall, breathing into my hands.

Victor had told me once that he’d never considered suicide, not even for a second, not even at his darkest moments. It’s the only life we have, he’d said.

Even when I was happy, I felt like I was always looking for the edges on life. The seams.

I was so perfectly born to die.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Sinner

“Can you experience nostalgia for something that hasn’t happened? We talk of ‘regrets’ about the course of our lives, when we are almost certain we have taken the wrong decision; but one can also be enveloped in a sweet and mysterious euphoria, a sort of nostalgia for what might have been.”
― Antoine Laurain, The Red Notebook