Isabelle McGill

“I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“I imagined them all thinking it was worth it. Telling me how much they loved me. All my life, when I thought of my future, that was what I pictured. Not a career. The things I thought would come with it. Happiness, love, safety. And that dream had been enough for a long time. What was school if not a chance to earn your worth? To prove, again and again, that you were measurably good. One more deal I struck with a disinterested universe: If I'm good enough, I'll be happy. I'll be loved. I'll be safe.”
― Emily Henry, Happy Place

“My best friends taught me a new kind of quiet, the peaceful stillness of knowing one another so well you don’t need to fill the space. And a new kind of loud: noise as a celebration, as the overflow of joy at being alive, here, now.”
― Emily Henry, Happy Place

“The need to call this thing “good” and this thing “bad,” this thing “white” and this thing “black,” was an impulse that Effia did not understand. In her village, everything was everything. Everything bore the weight of everything else.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing