Michaela

“Most people, the minute they meet you, were sizing you up for some competition for resources. It was as if everyone lived in fear of a shipwreck, where only so many people would fit on the lifeboat, and they were constantly trying to stake out their property and identify dispensable people – people they could get rid of.... Everyone is trying to reassure themselves: I'm not going to get kicked off the boat, they are. They're always separating people into two groups, allies and dispensable people... The number of people who want to understand what you're like instead of trying to figure out whether you get to stay on the boat - it's really limited.”
― Elif Batuman, The Idiot

“There is a stab of awareness at the beginning and at the end of love, and the feeling precisely replicates—it’s a twinge of cold certainty at either end of the affair, and it is twice terrifying.”
― Kevin Barry, Night Boat to Tangier

“It’s freedom, she says. It’s poverty, Charlie says. Poverty is always for free.”
― Kevin Barry, Night Boat to Tangier

“It seemed very remarkable that you could travel halfway around the world and still end up looking at some ducks.”
― Elif Batuman, The Idiot