Heart the Lover

by Lily King

‘There’s nothing honest about the degradation of women. It’s a power move and it’s been working for a few millennia.’

‘It just hurts a little, to feel this good.’

‘You know how you can remember exactly when and where you read certain books? A great novel, a truly great one, not only captures a particular fictional experience, it alters and intensifies the way you experience your own life while you’re reading it. And it preserves it, like a time capsule.’

As soon as his voice is gone I have that feeling I often have when I’m away from my family, like they are moving farther and farther away from me, beginning to flicker faintly as distant stars and I will never ever reach them again. It feels like a premonition of the fact that someday, one by one, we will be separated from each other forever.