So blind we humans are — so blind. To each other and to ourselves, moving through life as though through shadows, putting out a hand in the dark and thinking we have touched someone. And maybe we have... But mostly we travel through life unsighted, grasping only the smallest details of one another’s selves, including our own. Thinking all the while that we can see. ~ Elizabeth Strout, The Things We Never Say
“Oh God! He said he was DTF...we thought that meant down to finance .” Tilly lets out a wallop of a laugh. “DTF...girl, that’s the acronym for down to fuck .” ~ Meghan Quinn, Rules for the Summer
“There comes a point in every marriage when a woman realizes that the man she married is a freak. This is inevitable. It cannot be avoided. The only real question in the matter is what type of freak your husband will be—meaning: if you are lucky, you will find out your husband is preternaturally into vintage children’s train sets, and you will not find out that your husband pays high school cheerleaders for sex. That is the best we homemakers can hope for in this life: a man whose freakishness is not unspeakably violent or technically illegal, and therefore is something we are able to bear.” ~ Caro Claire Burke, Yesteryear
The ocean was a magician, I saw that now. These waves, their rippling crests and troughs, were an illusory trick, a veneer for everything that existed beneath. I had glimpsed that other world, and the one I had been born into was transformed forever. ~ EJ Swift, The Coral Bones
It’s just that we’re destroying the planet for real and no one seems to give a shit — and then something bad happens to one of us, a human being, and it’s “earth-shattering”. ~ Eric Puchner, Dream State
“You are not replaceable,” he said, his hands trembling against her shoulders. “You are not required to make your death convenient. You are allowed to be important to people.” ~ SenLinYu, Alchemised