Cat

“Hunger, Red—to sate a hunger or to stoke it, to feel hunger as a furnace, to trace its edges like teeth—is this a thing you, singly, know? Have you ever had a hunger that whetted itself on what you fed it, sharpened so keen and bright that it might split you open, break a new thing out? Sometimes I think that’s what I have instead of friends.”
― Amal El-Mohtar, This Is How You Lose the Time War

“I have observed friendships as one observes high holy days: breathtakingly short, whirlwinds of intimate behavior, frenzied carousing, the sharing of food, of wine, of honey. Compressed, always, and gone as soon as they come.”
― Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War

“It is difficult—it is very difficult, to befriend where you wish to consume, to find those who, when they ask Do I have you still, when they end a letter with Yours, mean it in any substantive way.”
― Amal El-Mohtar, This Is How You Lose the Time War

“I had the peculiar confidence of only children, the boldness that came from being doted on but alone often enough to be oblivious to my own strangeness.”
― Danielle Evans