Elise

“[O]ne of the mixed blessings of being twenty and twenty-one and even twenty-three is the conviction that nothing like this, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, has ever happened before.”
― Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

“Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Tale of Despereaux

“I have never known a mouse who has made it out of the dungeon only to go back into it again. Goodbye, friend. Goodbye, mouse among mice.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Tale of Despereaux

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.”
― Ursula K. LeGuin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas