Brenna Beltramo

“She had replied, "You're a survivor, too, Willard."
"Well," he had said, " I used to think I was one, Mrs. Kaplan. Now I'm not so sure. I guess everybody who isn't dead yet is a survivor."
"Now, now," she had said, "let's talk about something pleasant. Let's talk about Baltra."
But the blood supply to his brain must have been momentarily dependable then, because *Wait had continued to follow this line of reasoning. He'd even given a dry little laugh. He'd said, "There are all these people bragging about how they're survivors, as though that's something very special. But the only kind of person who can't say that is a corpse."
"There, there," she'd said.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Like so many other pathological personalities in positions of power a million years ago, he might do almost anything on impulse, feeling nothing much. The logical explanations for his actions, invented at leisure, always came afterwards”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Galápagos

“There is pain in every almost.”
― Stephen King, Fairy Tale

“To make it last, to keep from triggering, I tell Nico's flowered backside how beautiful she is, how sweet she is and how much I need her. Her skin and hair. To make it last. Because this is the only time I can say it. Because the moment this is over, we'll hate each other. The moment we find ourselves cold and sweating on the bathroom floor, the moment after we both come, we won't want to even look at each other.
The only person we'll hate more than each other is ourselves.
These are the only few minutes I can be human.
Just for these minutes, I don't feel lonely.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke