Jennith Chen

“Love isn’t conditional,” Ruth said. “It’s not dependent on jumping through hoops to please someone—and always failing. You can’t love someone if you’re afraid of them, Mariana. I know it’s hard to hear. It’s a kind of blindness—but unless you wake up and see clearly, it will persist throughout your whole life, affecting how you see yourself, and others too.”
― Alex Michaelides, The Maidens

“You better get used to having me around.” I sniffle. “Haunting me?” “No.” He smiles. “Loving you.”
― B.K. Borison, Good Spirits

“He is learning that in any war, the victors may be destroyed as completely as the vanquished. They still have their lives, but they have given up everything else in order to keep them. They sacrifice what they do not realize they have until they have lost it. And so the man who can win the war can only rarely survive the peace.”
― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships

“It's going somewhere without ever taking a train or ship, an unveiling of new, incredible worlds. It's living a life you weren't born into and a chance to see everything colored by someone else's perspective. It's learning without having to face consequences of failures, and how best to succeed...I think within all of us, there is a void, a gap waiting to be filled by something. For me, that something is books and all their proffered experiences.”
― Madeline Martin, The Last Bookshop in London