Quotes From Books I've Read Recently (and some photos I took)

Her poems were good, I thought. She was young and she'd get older and be different. I had a dream after she died that she brought me to the point of death and then shot me up with electricity, pure sex and oatmeal. Oh, she ate oatmeal every day, her friends told me. She thought it cured depression. I didn't know that. I barely knew her at all. She was on hold, someone l'd be friends with when she got her shit together. And then she died.
From Valencia by Michelle Tea

"And none of this is your fault," I say. "Please tell me you know that." She nods, fingers pressing into her eyes again. "I don't think it's messed up that you miss him." Brother and boy. Family and stranger. Friend and enemy. It is messed up, but not because we're splitting him apart in our minds. It's messed up because we have to. "I can only say that about missing him to you, Mara. So, don't feel bad, okay? About feeling . . . the way you do about him. I find her hand, twining us together and holding on as tightly as I can. "Thank you," she says. "For what?" "For this." She holds up our hands and I squeeze her fingers.

From "Girl Made of Stars" by Ashley Herring Blake

Eventually, 'Dad is dead' turned into 'I will die', which was my introduction to the fear. The fear of gone. The fear of nothing at all, of what happens to me, of I am the main character and the story will crumble if I'm not there to see it through.
From "The Truth About Keeping Secrets" by Savannah Brown

We walk in silence. Sometimes this happens without warning. Like the magnitude of the past-of all that has happened--creeps into the space and inflates. One minute it's this little thing-_-contained, pocket-size-_-the next minute it's a creature. With legs and arms and scales. That's how grief works. It's there even when you forget about it. It doesn't disappear, but just morphs, changes form.
From "The Edge of Falling" by Rebecca Serle

You can't share grief. In the end, when the building burns, you're still left with your own pieces. Your own shattered picture frames. You have to pick up what is yours choose to carry it, bury it, or say goodbye. From "The Edge of Falling" by Rebecca Serle

...this split second, calling to Astor, I don't feel afraid. I know something now that I didn't before. I know that my life doesn't have to be about what happened. What I failed to do. It can be about what I will.
From "The Edge of Falling" by Rebecca Serle

People don't like to say that the space between lies and truth is very, very small. It's there, but it's just a whisper away. One foot over a ledge. A lit match before contact. A line in a dust-covered book. A bird about to take flight. At a certain point, you have to decide the truth for yourself.
From "The Edge of Falling" by Rebecca Serle

Nor watched him leave, prepared to bite her tongue hard to keep from crying out. But though it felt like her heart had been punctured, she was startled to find she no longer felt the impulse to spill her own blood or to taste it. Even the scars on her wrists, ankles, and arms were silent. This pain seemed content to remain where it belonged.
From "Price Guide to the Occult" by Leslye Walton

"Do you think she loved him." Nor asked. "Do you think that's what caused all of this?"
"Some hearts can't do anything with love except turn it rotten. I think that was the case with Fern. She believed she loved him, but that love was a sour thing. Who knows what might have happened if you hadn't been powerful enough to stop her.
From "Price Guide to the Occult" by Leslye Walton

She reminded me of a warning I was fond of repeating: do not, under any circumstances, belittle a work of fiction by trying to turn it into a carbon copy of real life; what we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth.
From "Reading Lolita in Tehran" by Azar Nafisi