It Is Rarely The Book You Came To Seek, But The Book Next To That Book, Which Changes Your Mind And Heart.

Am I sounding creepy? Love is sort of creepy. When you fall in love, you presuppose all sorts of things about the person. You superimpose all kinds of ideals and fantasies on them. You create all manner of unrealistic, untenable, unsatisfiable criteria for that person, automatically guaranteeing their failure and your heartbreak. And what do we call it? Romance. Now, that’s creepy.

'Creepy and Maud' by Dianne Touchell

If you like enemies to lovers filled with all the best tropes PLEASE go watch this show🙏🏼

I felt like it was my civic duty to let you all know

At least if you were ignorant, you could do what you wanted, you had no idea what had been achieved in the past. You were free, instead of chewed at by bleeding impotence, dissolved away like a pearl in acid.

'Paint it Black' by Janet Fitch

We would have babies and get fat and quit drinking and not spend every waking moment together. We would turn up to events for which we had accepted invitations without texting absurd excuses. We had grown up. It was an essential part of letting go, deciding which ribbons of the past we wanted to tie around our fingers and which were best left on the maypole. I could weep for the unfairness of it all now. For the necessity in closing the door on the travelling salesman of youth. I could weep with such fondness for us all.

- 'You'll Be Sorry When I'm Dead' by Marieke Hardy 

Grief settles comfortably into any host; it is an ever-mutating, vigorous organism with an ever-renewing customer base. It generates a never-ending hunger, a never-ending ache, an unassuageable pain to new hearts, brains, guts every minute, every day, every year.It is the razor edge of a loose tooth shrieking to be pressed again and again into the soft pink sore gum. It’s a one-way tunnel with no proof of another exit.

'Wildlife' by Fiona Wood 

It's a weird smile, but it reaches his eyes and I bottle it. And I put it in my ammo pack that's kept right next to my soul and Justine's spirit and Siobhan's hope and Tara's passions. Because if I'm going to wake up one morning and not be able to get out of bed, I'm going to need everything I've got to fight this disease that could be sleeping inside of me.

'Saving Francesca' by Melina Marchetta 

I am a collection of oddities, a circus of neurons and electrons: my heart is the ringmaster, my soul is the trapeze artist, and the world is my audience. It sounds strange because it is, and it is, because I am strange.

Mosquitoland by David Arnold