ness

“He’s not sure why it matters that the book is from Mark. Maybe Eddie’s just lonely and desperate for conversation, and the book is an opportunity for that. Maybe he just doesn’t want Mark to think he’s dumb. It can’t be because Mark’s handsome, because Eddie’s been attracted to plenty of men, and never once has it made him want to read a book.”
― Cat Sebastian, You Should Be So Lucky

“Ronan Lynch was becoming a jagged, shaggy horror of a thing. She could feel the same wordless dread that the Lace invoked rising in her.

Hennessy hugged him.

She didn't even know where the impulse came from. She was not a sentimental hugger. She had not been hugged as a child, unless the hug was being emotionally weaponized for later. And Ronan Lynch did not seem like the sort of person who would care about getting a hug. Giving someone care and receiving it were two unrelated actions.

At first it did not seem to do anything.

Ronan kept screaming. The hug had not made him appear more human. He seemed more like Bryde than ever--and not Bryde when he was his most man-shaped. He just seemed like a dream entity that hated everything.

"Ronan Lynch, you asshole," Hennessy said.

Once, he'd hugged her. At the time, she had thought it didn't help, but she'd been wrong.

So she held on now, and kept holding on, though he became even less recognizable as Ronan Lynch for a little bit. Then, after a while, the scream gave way to quiet.

She could feel his body quivering. Like a pencil sketch, it conveyed misery with the smallest of gestures.

And then there was nothing at all, just stillness.

Finally, she realized he was hugging her, too, tightly.

There was a strange sort of magic to being a person holding another person after not being held by someone for a long time. There was another strange sort of magic to understand you'd been using words and silence the wrong way for a long time.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Greywaren

“Immakuk and Ennikar." He said.

"Where?" I snapped my head around to scan the dock, and he nudged me with his elbow.

"Idiot. Us."

"Oh. Of Course.”
― Megan Whalen Turner, Thick as Thieves

“We'll see how much I can do from a hospital room." George lets out a laugh. "Who am I kidding. I'll walk out of here on my own if I need to. I'm not dying in a hospital bed, and I'm not retiring." He coughs, and it sounds painful. "It's a beautiful game, sometimes."
There's a sense of loss in the old man's voice: He'll probably never see another game in person. This game that he's devoted his life to writing about, this game that he decided he'd like to spend his last years around, has been taken from him. That's what George just told him, though. This is what time does.”
― Cat Sebastian, You Should Be So Lucky