Julia Schaefer

“She closes her eyes. He probably won’t come back, she thinks. Or he will, differently. What they have now they can never have back again. But for her the pain of loneliness will be nothing to the pain that she used to feel, of being unworthy. He brought her goodness like a gift and now it belongs to her. Meanwhile his life opens out before him in all directions at once. They’ve done a lot of good for each other. Really, she thinks, really. People can really change one another.
You should go, she says. I’ll always be here. You know that.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“Marianne had the sense that her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her, and she didn't know if she would ever find out where it was or become part of it.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“It did not feel momentous, yet when I tore my eyes away from his I found that nothing looked quite the same, as though the world had fractured and sheared away from itself to reshape in almost - but not quite - the same formation. As though I had looked at a waterfall and realised with a faint jolt that the water flowing over the rock was ever-changing, that it would never be the same water again.”
― Jennifer Saint, Ariadne

“Wish we could start all over in that room, I said. Both leaning out the window in the evening, rubbing shoulders, as we did in Rome—every day of my life, I said. Every day of mine too. Shirt, toothbrush, score, and I'm flying over, so don't tempt me either.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name