Mel

“I told myself that when I grew up, I wasn’t going to let that happen to me. And I managed for a while. But then something unexpected happened, and I had to dig myself a little hole of debt to deal with it. Then to fill in that hole, I had to dig another, this one a little bigger. After a while, there were so many holes that I was bound to fall into one and not be able to get out. It’s hard. Life is hard. And too damn expensive.”
― Riley Sager, Lock Every Door

“What I know is less important than what the world sees,” Kit said. “Allow me to indulge in a little allegory. Art. Art is not one great act of creation, but many small ones. When you read one of my poems, you fail to see the weeks of careful work it took me to build it—the thinking, the scratched-out words, the pages I burned in disgust. All you see, in the end, is what I want you to see. Such is politics.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“Do not be a fool when the moment requires you to be something else.”
― Dan Alatorre, An Angel On Her Shoulder

“I mean, is translating experience into words an achievement at all? Or is it just the cause of all our unhappiness? Is it our tragedy and our ongoing conceit? The world gets carried away with words, phrases, and elaborate paragraphs. One word leads to another and soon enough you have affairs, wars, genocide and the Anthropocene.”
― Richard Flanagan, The Living Sea of Waking Dreams