Mars Nicoli

“Paul liked to pick out the secretly cool people, people too cool to flash their coolness. The cool people were not always or even usually the same as the shiny people. Often someone shiny was too conventionally good-looking to be cool but they were still compelling, in terms of sheer wattage. Paul knew he wasn't good-looking enough to be shiny, but he could be cool in certain contexts. Cool was relational and conceptual; cool took work, cool was a meritocracy which, with all its flaws, he still preferred to the aristocracy of genetics.”
― Andrea Lawlor, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl

“She was fine. There was no reason for her not to be, so she was fine.”
― Jonathan Sims, Thirteen Storeys

“We should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.”
― Oscar Wilde

“What good’s being alone if you don’t know how alone you truly are?”
― Jonathan Sims, The Magnus Archives: Season 4