Suzanne

“This house is a thing both ancient and disjointed, an entity of addition and subtraction, a palimpsest of stone and wood and caulk and mud, Its existence here, on the the peninsula, is proof that everything was once something else: nothing goes away.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, Land

“I think it’s the only form of hope we have. For our survival, I mean. What good is any other virtue without love?

In literature love is a weakness. Othello is easily manipulated by Iago because of his love for Desdemona. Anna Karenina throws herself under a train. Othello places his trust in Iago, not Desdemona. Anna Karenina’s society does not allow her to be with Vronsky.

Love is not the weakness. People get in its way. People are weak and perilous, not love.”
― Lily King, Heart the Lover

“You know how you can remember exactly when and where you read certain books? A great novel, a truly great one, not only captures a particular fictional experience, it alters and intensifies the way you experience your own life while you’re reading it. And it preserves it, like a time capsule.”
― Lily King, Heart the Lover

“How strange we all are! Most of us come from Irish and Scottish tribes cast out by the mother country. But we are still reading her poems and singing her songs. How odd that we define foreignness as those whose speech holds the trace of another language, and then we ignore altogether our own foreignness on land that was never our own.”
― Jane Urquhart, In Winter I Get Up at Night