Jane Wetzel

“I just don't get it," she says, twisting back around to look up at me. "How can you stand it that our lives are so short? They're so short, Clay." ..... "Every day you learn something amazing," Kat say "like, there's a secret underground library in New York City" -- she pauses and gapes for effect, and it makes me laugh -- "and you realize there's so much more that's waiting. Eighty years isn't enough. Or a hundred. Whatever. It's just not." Her voice goes a little ragged, and I realize how deep this current runs within Kat Potente.”
― Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore: A Novel

“She should not have taken any of these people at face value. She had been naive. But this conclusion, she realized, pointed unambiguously in the direction of cynicism. And she would not be a cynic. It was better to be naive, much better.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Lost Art of Gratitude

“That was what counted, she told herself: those unexpected moments of appreciation, unanticipated glimpses of beauty or kindness - any of the things that attached us to this world, that made us forget, even for a moment, its pain and its transience.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Novel Habits of Happiness

“This life is difficult. We lose fathers, brothers, mothers, songbirds and pieces of ourselves. Whips strike the innocent, honors go to the guilty, and there is too much loneliness. I would be a fool to pray for my children to escape all of that. Ask for too much and it might actually turn out worse. But I can pray for small things, like fertile fields, a mother’s love, a child’s smile—a life that’s less bitter than sweet.”
― Nadia Hashimi, The Pearl that Broke Its Shell