"There was, she thought, enough sadness in the house, maybe even more than she realized.  She would try as best she could not to add to it.  Her mother and Rose could not be fooled, she was sure, but there seemed to her an even greater reason why there should be no tears before her departure.  They would not be needed.  What she would need to do in the days before she left and on the morning of her departure was smile, so that they would remember her smiling."
-Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

"The saddest realization I've had in my life is that my parents are people.  Sad, human people.  I aged a decade in that moment."
-The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo by Amy Schumer

"'We can't ever be together,' he finished.  'But I always want to know you, even if we're in the same room and you're just saying hi to me over and over again, I'll be perfectly happy.  I'll always want to be sitting across from you.'"
-More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera

"Adults lie.  They lie about how they love children equally.  They never do.  They love children differently, and the difference is so broad that equality is not even in the picture."
-A World Without You by Beth Revis

"'Tell you what,' said Victor.  'You remember me, and I'll remember you, and that way we won't be forgotten.'"
-Vicious by V.E. Schwab

"It had taken all his control to hide the anger, the desire to pen over Eli's life, and rewrite it into his."
-Vicious by V.E. Schwab

"He meets me where I am, and because of the downward tilt of the driveway, we are toe to toe, nose to nose.  'Willowdean Opal Dickson, you are beautiful.  Fuck anyone who's ever made you feel anything less.'  His chest heaves.  'When I close my eyes, I see you.  I can talk to you.  In a way I never have with anyone else.'

Beautiful, he says.  Fat, I think.  But can't I be both at the same time?
-Dumplin' by Julie Murphy

"'Why?'  I drop my bag in the driveway.  'Why do you want to be with this?'  I wave my arm up and down the length of my body.  Immediately, I hate myself for this.  The only person making this about my body is me." 
-Dumplin' by Julie Murphy

"I expected to hear from Mitch yesterday.  A follow-up call of some sort to make sure we were cool after Halloween.  Or maybe, like, a customer service call to rate my satisfaction.  But nothing." 
-Dumplin' by Julie Murphy

"I get what he means, because I think I've played pretend my whole life.  I don't know when, but a really long time ago, I decided who I wanted to be.  And I've been acting like her - whoever she is - since.  But I think the act is fading, and I don't know if I like the person I am beneath it all.  I wish there were some kind of magic words that could bridge the gap between the person I am and the one I wish I could be.  Because the whole fake it till you make it thing?  It's not working for me." 
-Dumplin' by Julie Murphy

"No matter how much I tell myself that the fat and the stretch marks don't matter, they do.  Even if Bo, for whatever reason, doesn't care, I do.

Then there are days when I really give zero flying fucks, and I am totally satisfied with this body of mine.  How can I be both of those people at once?"
-Dumplin' by Julie Murphy

"It's not that I feel unworthy.  I deserve my happy ending.  But what if, for me, Bo is a high point and, for him, I'm a lapse in judgement?"
-Dumplin' by Julie Murphy

"Because for the first time in my life, I fit.  I fit without any question."
-Dumplin' by Julie Murphy

"My stomach starts to burn.  Crushes are so stupidly physical sometimes, like colds."
-Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here by Anna Breslaw

"He turned towards me, a familiar face but in a really unfamiliar way, his green eyes locked on me.  He moved his head closer to mine, and it felt so right that I'd already close my eyes."
-Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here by Anna Breslaw

"I felt him subtly glance me up and down, quick and fluttery like a moth, as if I was some random girl walking by him on the street and we hadn't been best friends for almost seven years.  It gave me a little shiver.  In a good way, I realized."
-Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here by Anna Breslaw

"I said her name. 

I recited 'Lovesong', a poem I like a great deal but she never though much of.  I apologised for reading it and told myself not to worry.

The ashes stirred and seemed eager so I tilted the thin and I yelled into the wind

I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU

and up they went, the sense of a cloud, the failure of clouds, scientifically quick and visually hopeless, a murder of little burnt birds flecked against the grey sky, the grey sea, the white sun, and gone.  And the boys were behind me, a tide-wall of laughter and yelling, hugging my legs, tripping and grabbing, leaping, spinning, stumbling, roaring, shrieking and the boys shouted

I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU

and their voice was the life and song of their mother. 
Unfinished.  Beautiful.  Everything."
-Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter

"Connoisseurs, they were, of how to miss a mother."
-Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter

"This is what we know of Dad.  He was a
quiet boy.  He drifted off on family walks,
he doodled and drew and his feelings were
easily hurt by rough kids at school.  He
didn't have a head for sums.  He spent the
first twenty years of his life reading books,
being not-bad-but-not-skilled at football
and waiting for Mum.  He loved the Greek
myths and Russians and Joyce.  He was
waiting to be our Dad.

And then our Mum and Dad were in love
and they were truly dry-stone strong and
durable and people speak of ease and joy
and spontaneity and the fact that their two
smells became one smell, our smell.  Us.

Afterwards he was quieter.  He was, for two
or three years, by all accounts, very odd.
He had the perpetual look and demeanour
of someone floating, turning in the beer-
gold light of evening and being surprised
by the enduring warmth.  A rolled-over
shoulder half-squint half-smile.  Caught
baffled by the perplexing slow-release of
sadness for ever and ever and ever.  Which
I suppose, looking back, was because of us.
He couldn't rage.  He couldn't want to die.
He couldn't rail against an absence when
it was grinning, singing, freckling in the
English summer tweedle dee tweedle dum
in front of him.  Perhaps if Crow taught
him anything it was a constant balancing.
For want of a less dirty word: faith. 

A howling sorry which is
yes which is thank you which is onwards."
-Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter

"There's grief and there's impractical obsession.

I was impractically obsessed with before, I said."
-Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter