"Not only did he need to prove to Vanessa that he had been worth sticking with, but he needed to address the panic that this would, unless he put a stop to it, keep happening. He would keep falling in love with women. He would love one woman for a few years like he had Vanessa till things got a little regular, then another woman like Kay would appear and he'd fall in love with her, and even if he never actually fell in love with any woman ever again, he was pretty sure he wouldn't be able to say no to the occasional temptation. He didn't see how he'd be able to help himself. He figured he'd better stop it now and try to stick with one woman."

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Rapture by Susan Minot

 

"And of us both they will say: Why all that conflict and struggle, why did they fight instead of just looking and staying still, why were they unable to meet or to go on seeing each other, and why so much sleep, so many dreams, and why that scratch, my pain, my word, your fever, that dance, and all those doubts, all that torment?"

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Your Face Tomorrow Volume 2: Dance and Dream by Javier Marías

 

"What she had cared for was his commitment to their shared narrative, the endless interpretive games that had made up their life together." 

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The Vivisectors by Missouri Williams

 

"...why is it, I think, while getting stoned out of my mind on Poppy's shitty vape pen, that in this life, in our simulation, in whatever terrifying meaningless thing it is we're all doing every day, we can only create infinite and infinitely worse versions of things we already have instead of good new things we need?"

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Worry by Alexandra Tanner

 

"...I fantasize about that possibility until I realize that those things only happen in fiction. Real life is much more ordinary: metro rides, evenings at the supermarket, calls to your phone company's customer service, gynecological checkups, baskets of dirty clothes that pile up in the bathroom, toothpaste tubes that are squeezed and folded to get out the last drop, unanswered messages from people you want to answer and answered messages from people you couldn't care less about, bills, loyalty cards for La Sirena frozen foods and Carrefour accumulating in your waller, dishcloths that smell damp, deep-cleaning the kitchen after a lot of frying. In real life, boredom exists, as does uneasiness and situations that lead to nothing, no character growth or plot advancement of any sort."

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Discontent by Beatriz Serrano

 

"Most of the time, you understand women—often better than they understand themselves. But every now and then, you are very, very wrong."

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Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka

 

"For a moment, he dissolves into the song. The turning of the world is of no consequence to him. He doesn't even feel the ground beneath his boots."

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Seascraper by Benjamin Wood

 

"I love all things, not because they are passionate or sweet-smelling but because, I don't know, because this ocean is yours, and mine"

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Odes to Common Things by Pablo Neruda

 

"My heart was not trained to love anyone but him. I could only love one person. This was my innate principle. It would disrupt the nervous system to be otherwise. It goes against nature to be otherwise. I cannot just transfer my affections, for they are carved in stone, and were decreed three billion years before this ocean rolled."

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Lives of the Saints by Nancy Lemann

 "'There's no avoiding it. Men are weak, women are strong, Fate is omnipotent.'"

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Smoke by Ivan Turgenev

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