Ben

“And her joy would become a restless thing, flapping its wings inside her, as though looking for an opening to fly away.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

“If you're in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Nonstalgia (noun) The unsettling sensation that you are never be able to fully access the past; that once you are departed from an event, some essential quality of it is lost forever. A reminder to remember: just because the sharpness of the sadness has faded does not mean that it was not, once, terrible. It means only that time and space, creatures of infinite girth and tenderness, have stepped between the two of you, and they are keeping you safe as they were once unable to.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House