Shirley

“Words trembled on the tip of Hermione’s tongue. All week she’d kept them inside, trying to wall herself off, keep herself safe. But she didn’t know how. Her entire life it had been this way. Once she cared, she couldn’t make it stop. She was wholehearted; she was her whole heart.”
― Speechwriter, The Disappearances of Draco Malfoy

“In my opinion, there are two types of perfect. The first is the type that seems so obvious and intuitive to you and everyone else that in a perfect world it would simply be considered standard; but, in reality, in our flawed world, what should be considered standard is actually so rare that it has to be elevated to the level of “perfect.” This is the type of perfect that makes you and most other people think, “Why isn’t everything like this? Why is it so hard to find …” a black V-neck cotton sweater, or a casual non-chain restaurant with comfortable booths, etc.—“that is just exactly the way everyone knows something like this should be?” “Perfect,” we all say with relief when we finally find something like this that is exactly as it should be. “Perfect. Why was this so hard to find?”
The other type of perfect is the type you never could have expected and then could never replicate.”
― B.J. Novak, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories

“People who knew me and sympathized with me were determined to set me up with the other people they sympathized with and were always surprised when I would turn down their offer of what they thought of as romantic charity. “What’s the harm?” they would ask me, truly surprised. The harm, besides those hours that actually do matter when you barely have one night off every couple of weeks, is the little mark you get on you every time you open up a door to a hope and then close it fast in disappointment. It leaves a nick, or a dent, and those nicks and dents are not invisible. I used to see them all the time.”
― B.J. Novak, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories

“I closed my eyes and let the music flow through me, cleansing my soul of all fear and sin and reminding me that I am always better than I think and stronger than I believe.”
― Paulo Coelho, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept