Beth

“Jivan: You think when you have love that love is easy to find, that everyone has it. It's not true. It's very hard to find.
Nedra: I haven't been looking for it.
Jivan: It's like a tree...It takes a long time to grow. It has roots very deep, and these roots stretch out a long way, farther than you know. You can't cut it, just like that.”
― James Salter, Light Years

“Who's Johnnie Walker?"
"It's a drink. For grown-ups."
"Is it nice?"
"Makes you drunk."
"What's it like being drunk?"
"Like being awake and asleep at the same time."
"Sounds nice."
"It was meant to sound terrible," he said looking down his glasses at her. "You get sick and stagger around. People actually vomit sometimes.”
― Tom Rachman, The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

“Like everyone he knew, he could discern the hollowness in people’s charm only when it was directed at someone other than himself.”
― Lorrie Moore, Bark

“What I know is, you have chance in life--of surviving it--if you tolerate loss well; manage not to be a cynic through it all; to subordinate, as Ruskin implied, to keep proportion, to connect the unequal things into a whole that preserves the good, even if admittedly good is often not simple to find.”
― Richard Ford