Ben

“He was still seen as weird.
If he was noticed at all.
[...]
Flipping through the book, reading page after page of spirits with names like djinn and stafie, he realized he wasn't the only one who didn't feel seen. That the world was filled with entities who were here but invisible, present but ignored.
[...]
She wouldn't understand that he sees ghosts as, no pun intended, kindred spirits. That when he opens The Giant Book and sees illustrations of all these scary, fantastical, misunderstood spirits, it feels like they could be the friends he lacks.”
― Riley Sager, Middle of the Night

“I’ll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before. You do that first, in your head, and then you make it real. So that’s how they do it, I thought. I seemed never to have known that before.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

“The Kindness is our defence against disintegration, and we would do well to give it some thought now and again. It is so important, yet at the same time so fragile. What happens if the Kindness crumbles away, and what will become of us?”
― John Ajvide Lindqvist

“He doesn't normally wish he had friends, but when this thought comes to him, he does. It might be helpful to know a man of his age and experience who could tell him whether his troubles were benign or terminal.”
― Mason Coile, William