Jenna

“Do you ever think about how small we are? Do you ever think about space?" I ask her. "I keep fixating on dying, and thinking about why we exist, and how sad everything is. I've been starting to think that the only thing that matters is that people feel happy, and I was trying to spare you some sadness. I keep noticing so many people aren't happy, and it's been making me feel sick. I keep looking at everyone and thinking, Oh my God, I just want them to smile. I keep staring at peoples mouths. Do you know what I mean? I keep thinking, Oh my God, I just wish you were smiling—"

Rosemary nods. "Yes, I have thought about that too.” She looks at my mouth. "Now, do you ever think about how people might wish that for you?”
― Emily Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me.
If I had had words to speak such a thing, I would have. But there were none that seemed big enough for it, to hold that swelling truth.
As if he had heard me, he reached for my hand. I did not need to look; his fingers were etched into my memory, slender and petal-veined, strong and quick and never wrong.
“Patroclus,” he said. He was always better with words than I.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“& remember, loneliness is still time spent with the world.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in their hands.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe