Moupriya Dev

“I tried to go to sleep with my headphones still on, but then after a while my mom and dad came in, and my mom grabbed Bluie from the shelf and hugged him to her stomach, and my dad sat down in my desk chair, and without crying he said, 'You are not a grenade, not to us. Thinking about you dying makes us sad, Hazel, but you are not a grenade. You are amazing. You can't know, sweetie, because you've never had a baby become a brilliant young reader with a side interest in horrible television shows, but the joy you bring us is so much greater than the sadness we feel about your illness.'

'Okay,' I said.

'Really,' my dad said. 'I wouldn't bullshit you about this. If you were more trouble than you're worth, we'd just toss you out on the streets.'

'We're not sentimental people,' Mom added, deadpan. 'We'd leave you at an orphanage with a note pinned to your pajamas.”
― John Green

“Courage doesn’t happen when you have all the answers. It happens when you are ready to face the questions you have been avoiding your whole life.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“I know it. I know I shall make beastly mistakes, Father-"
"The world does not forgive mistakes so quickly, my girl." He sounds bitter and sad.
"If the world will not forgive me," I say softly, "I shall have to learn to forgive myself."
He nods in understanding.
"And how will you marry? Or do you intend to marry?"
I think of Kartik, and tears threaten. "I shall meet someone one day, as Mother found you.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“Could it be? Samantha Kingston? Home? On a Friday?”
I roll my eyes. “I don’t know. Did you do a lot of acid in the sixties? Could be a flashback.”
“I was two years old in 1960. I came too late for the party.” He leans down and pecks me on the head. I pull away out of habit. “And I’m not even going to ask how you know about acid flashbacks.”
“What’s an acid flashback?” Izzy crows.
“Nothing,” my dad and I say at the same time, and he smiles at me.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall