Alyce

“Nothing has changed. It’s still very simple. I miss him. I miss him every day. I miss him very much.
But how would it be if that feeling was gone?
I would not want that to happen.
I told the shrink: it would not make me happy at all not to miss him anymore.”
― Sigrid Nunez, The Friend

“Without being able to decipher a word of the placard at the Gate, he had learnt his lesson—in Regent’s Park dogs must be led on chains.”
― Virginia Woolf, Flush

“But how different! Hers was the pale worn face of an invalid, cut off from air, light, freedom. His was the warm ruddy face of a young animal; instinct with health and energy. Broken asunder, yet made in the same mould, could it be that each completed what was dormant in the other? She might have been—all that; and he—But no. Between them lay the widest gulf that can separate one being from another. She spoke. He was dumb. She was woman; he was dog. Thus closely united, thus immensely divided, they gazed at each other. Then with one bound Flush sprang on to the sofa and laid himself where he was to lie for ever after—on the rug at Miss Barrett’s feet.”
― Virginia Woolf, Flush

“He tells you to play, so you play. He tells you to curtsy, so you curtsy. He tells what you are meant to do and what you are meant not to do, so you do and you dono do. He tells you not to be angry, so you smile, you turn your eyes down, you are quiet and do exactly as he says in the hopes that this is what he wants, and then one night you realize that you have given him so much of yourself that you are nothing but the curtsy and the smile and the quiet. That you are nothing.”
― Marie Lu, The Kingdom of Back