Oanh

“I really did not feel okay about any of this, and there was really nothing I could do about any of it.”
― Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You

“To a parent, your child wasn't just a person: your child was a place, a kind of Narnia, a vast eternal place where the present you were living and the past you remembered and the future you longed for all at the same time. You could see it every time you looked at her: layered in her face was the baby she'd been and the child she'd become and the adult she would grow up to be, and you saw them all simultaneously, like a 3-D image. It made your head spin. It was a place you could take refuge, if you knew how to get in. And each time you left it, each time your child passed out of your sight, you feared you might never be able to return to that place again.”
― Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“We don't come fresh to even the most inaccessible of landscapes.
...
We carry expectations and to an extent make what we meet conform to those expectations.

p 195”
― Robert MacFarlane

“I know all about the facts of life, and I don't think much of them.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle