…he doesn’t want you to admire him; he wants you to see him as he is. He wants you to tell him that his life, as inconceivable as it is, is still a life.

Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures.

Gail Caldwell, Let’s Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship

Laila came to believe that of all the hardships a person has to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.

Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns