aims

“I kept thinking about the uneven quality of time--the way it was almost always so empty, and then with no warning came a few days that felt so dense and alive and real that it seemed indisputable that that was what life was, that its real nature had finally been revealed. But then time passed and unthinkably grew dead again, and it turned out that that fullness had been an aberration and might never come back.”
― Elif Batuman, The Idiot

“I was by now used to people being surprised by me and my background, and their surprise offended me. I was always having to be what I was looking for in the world, wishing the person I would become already existed — some other I before me. I was forever finding even the tiniest way to identify with someone to escape how empty the world seemed to be of what I was.”
― Alexander Chee, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

“Nook people are those of us who need solitude, but also the sound of someone puttering in the next room.”
― Durga Chew-Bose, Too Much and Not the Mood: Essays

“Connell wished he knew how other people conducted their private lives, so that he could copy from example.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People