Bridget

“Always it was the same, Furlong thought; always they carried mechanically on without pause, to the next job at hand. What would life be like, he wondered, if they were given time to think and reflect over things? Might their lives be different or much the same – or would they just lose the run of themselves?”
― Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

“Why couldn’t anybody understand that he was not really a freak but a normal, lonely adult trying to lead a normal, lonely adult life?”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“I thought of a friend in La who'd said recently of her own daughter, "It feels wrong to give her all this happiness and confidence when we know what is coming. Seventh grade is going to hit like a wall. It feels like fattening a pig for slaughter." But what was the alternative? Starving the pig?”
― Rebecca Makkai, I Have Some Questions for You

“As we drove I suddenly had a visceral memory of what a hideous thing marriage was for me at times those years with William: a familiarity so dense it filled up the room, your throat almost clogged with knowledge of the other so that it seemed to practically press into your nostrils—the odor of the other’s thoughts, the self-consciousness of every spoken word, the slight flicker of an eyebrow slightly raised, the barely perceptible tilting of the chin; no one but the other would know what it meant; but you could not be free living like that, not ever. Intimacy became a ghastly thing.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!