Sasha ★

“Either way, it is difficult for Hannah to imagine such an event in her own life. She wonders how long it will be before she kisses someone, before she has sex, before a guy tells her he loves her. She wonders if these delays are due to something she does other girls don't do, or something they do she doesn't. Maybe she will never kiss anyone. By the time she is old, she will be as rare as a coelacanth: a fish according to her Evolutionary Biology textbook, that was thought to have gone extinct seventy million years ago until one was found off the coast of Madagascar in the 1930s, and then again in a marketplace in Indonesia. She will be lobe-finned and blue-scaled and soundless, gliding alone through dark water.”
― Curtis Sittenfeld, The Man of My Dreams

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“But maybe this is what Hannah has always wanted: a man who will deny her. A man of her own who isn't hers. Isn't it the real reason she broke up with Mike--not because he moved to North Carolina for law school (he wanted her to go with him, and she said no) but because he adored her? If she asked him to get out of bed and bring her a glass of water, he did. If she was in a bad mood, he tried to soothe her. It didn't bother him if she cried, or if she didn't wash her hair or shave her legs or have anything interesting to say. He forgave it all, he always thought she was beautiful, he always wanted to be around her. It became so boring! She'd been raised, after all, not to be accommodated but to accommodate, and if she was his world, then his world was small, he was easily satisfied. After a while, when he parted her lips with his tongue, she'd think, Thrash, thrash, here we go. She wanted to feel like she was striving cleanly forward, walking into a bracing wind and learning from her mistakes, and she felt instead like she was sitting in a deep, squishy sofa, eating Cheetos, in an overheated room. With Oliver, there is always contrast to shape their days, tension to keep them on their toes: You are far form me, you are close to me. We are fighting, we are getting along.”
― Curtis Sittenfeld, The Man of My Dreams

“Maybe I am fated to always be alone, Tsukuru found himself thinking. People came to him, but in the end they always left. They came, seeking something, but either they couldn’t find it, or were unhappy with what they found (or else they were disappointed or angry), and then they left. One day, without warning, they vanished, with no explanation, no word of farewell. Like a silent hatchet had sliced the ties between them, ties through which warm blood still flowed, along with a quiet pulse.”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage