"...But it gradually seemed to me that I'd made myself believe something that wasn't true. I'd made myself believe that I was fine and happy and fulfilled on my own without the love of anyone else. Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some people went there, but I never would. I'd spend all my life without ever going to China, but it wouldn't matter, because there was all the rest of the world to visit... And I thought: am I really going to spend the rest of my life without feeling that again? I thought: I want to go to China. It's full of treasures and strangeness and mysteries and joy."
— Philip Pullman (The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, Book 3))

"When he was little, she'd stay late in his room, drawing pictures of him as he slept. She had fat pads filled with closeup sketches of his growing muscles, hands, and teeth, roughly rendered in black ink and charcoal. She wasn't trained or ambitious when it came to art; she was simply fascinated by her creation—not the drawings, the person. "This is mine," she'd say, checking Henry's pulse, looking into his nostrils, "This is me." She once counted his eyelashes with a magnifying glass and drew each one to scale."
— Dana Adam Shapiro (The Every Boy)

"People who have only good experiences aren't very interesting. They may be content, and happy after a fashion, but they aren't very deep. It may seem a misfortune now, and it makes things difficult, but well--it's easy to feel all the happy, simple stuff. Not that happiness is necessarily simple. But I don't think you're going to have a life like that, and I think you'll be the better for it. The difficult thing is to not be overwhelmed by the bad patches. You must not let them defeat you. You must see them as a gift--a cruel gift, but a gift nonetheless."
— Peter Cameron (Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You)