"The inexchangeable pleasure of her conversation. Just to walk the streets saying things, anything, just the act itself, walking together at the same speed, and talking, purely to amuse and please one another, to make each other stupidly laugh, for no further accomplishment, no higher purpose, to let their words rise and disperse forever in the damp brackish air."

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

 

"Right when I wanted a hurricane there was a hurricane. I had longed to be swept off my feet, to get entangled in something, and I had the good luck of getting exactly what I'd asked for, the bad luck of getting everything I thought I wanted, the good luck and the bad luck of having my prayers about passionate love heard."

The Details by Ia Genberg

 

"Leslie and I got past compatibility, to that place where you surprise yourself with how badly you want to stay in that liminal pocket together, how desperate and unattractive you're willing to be to experience uncompromised joy."

Early Work by Andrew Martin

 

"Lilya had never seen such men—she could not say she liked him in himself, but he evoked her interested respect."

The Body of the Soul: Stories by Ludmila Ulitskaya

 

"None of the humans are satellites the way she is, in her orbit around Doug...He is the only star in their system, she realizes. He has no competition, no need to listen to Annie like she's her own protagonist because she's not. She has no outside, separate life beyond his. They have no issues of imbalance between them because they have no question, ever, about who has complete power."

Annie Bot by Sierra Greer

 

"A lot of writing consists of waiting around for the aquarium to settle so you can see the fish. Walking around muttering seems to hasten the process. Taking public transportation nowhere helps. Looking out the bus window helps your mind move forward. Don't listen to anything but natural sound. Don't look at anything you have to turn on. This is about the pleasure of silence."

Thinking About Memoir by Abigail Thomas

 


"'All mothers are anxious, we're always anxious, but we must not transmit our anxiety to our children. It is not enough to give them life, we have to give them courage to live, to live intensely, to live, not merely to survive.'"

The White Dress by Nathalie Léger

 

"Kelly arrived in Paris in October 1948, still a beneficiary of the U.S. government, with an increased stipend of $75 a month, plus tuition covered by the G.I. Bill."  

Ellsworth Kelly by Tricia Y. Paik

 

"I cannot believe how much pain we are asked to bear when we are alive. How, even if there is a way, no one can show us how to live with it."

Here After by Amy Lin

 

"When you fall in love young, you imagine that the object of your desire is both finite and infinite, a magical and unfathomable creature who you will also be able to know completely. I wanted to crack Alice open like a geode, to expose all her crystals, her stars. It was hard to accept that she had anything in her life that didn't concern me; it made no difference that I was hiding parts of my life from her."

Blue Ruin by Hari Kunzru