Johanna

“This life is filled with inescapable moral compromises. We should do what we can to avoid the easy ones.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“And so part of the declaring of love means you are working to a commission, now. You are not the sole architect of the person you are building. Someone else is looking over your blueprints--nodding, enthusiastically,over this turret--so you build the turret bigger! and remaining tactfully silent over an ostentatious fountain, which you immediately and silently scrap. You have entered a new world--in which there are two opinions on what will make the very best you.

And if your partner is wise, and kind, and has the same taste as you, you will make amazing things together.

And if your partner is broken, or impatient, or has darker needs--is unknowingly trying to build you in the shape of another woman he once knew, and lost; is trying to lean into your foundations to make his own stronger--you will make something with rotten walls, and impossible angles, which will, one day in the future, collapse.

But that is all part of becoming an adult. That is the difference between girls and women. That they are finally ready to hear the secret of what makes them them,. That they are strong enough--for good, or for ill--to ask someone what is, unexpectedly,the most terrifying, relevatory question, on Earth; one you have to be brave, and ready, to hear: "Why do you love me?”
― Caitlin Moran, How to be Famous

“This is what time travel is. It’s looking at a person, and seeing them in the present and the past, concurrently. And that mode of transport only worked with those one had known a significant time.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“It is far too easy to stay stuck in simply describing, telling one’s story over and over again, which can be a way of holding on to grief about the past or holding on to a narrative that places blame on others.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions: 1