“She Was So Desperate To Love Someone. It Seemed Like Such A Simple, Singular Thing To Ask From This

“I’ve never said “I love you” to anyone before,” she murmured, resting her head on his bicep. “It didn’t feel like I always thought it would.”

He ran his hand down her hair. “How did you think it would feel?”

She thought about it. “Getting it over with. Like ripping off a Band-Aid.”

“And how did it feel instead?”

“The reverse. Like putting a bandage on. Wrapping it tight.”

It Happened One Summer by Tessa Bailey

“They looked at each other like they were . . . in love. My chest hurt, and my smile fell. I wished love was visible, like the sparkles on Elena’s gown. Or the shimmer of the sun on skin. Then it couldn’t be hidden or faked.

I wondered what love felt like.

I wondered if it even existed.”

The Maddest Obsession by Danielle Lori

"Do you think all the rulers were assholes, or do you think there were some good ones out there? Ones that appreciated the people around them, and the people beneath them?"

"I think there were good people. You always have to trust that there are good people out there in the world, and even if the bad people have louder mouths, the good people have bigger hearts. And those hearts will outweigh the mouths."

“She was a siren, an angel of mercy, and a horny woman all rolled into one. A fucking dream.”

It Happened One Summer by Tessa Bailey

Do not fall in love with the moon, they said. 

I fell in love anyway, and they would all laugh. They could not see her beauty. No one would believe me if I said the moon breathed life into me, that it was here, inside her, where I found myself again. They wouldn’t be able to understand. And no one could ever love her as deeply as I did. No one else was made for it, and those who were like me weren’t brave enough. No ordinary being was created to fall in love with the moon, only that of the aberrant. The strange. They said you couldn’t know the moon, touch it, kiss it, make love to it. You could only watch from the dark trenches of the earth, admire it from afar.

Yet, still, I fell in love with the moon. And she, too, fell in love with me.

Hollow Heathens by Nicole Fiorina

“Because there’s no do I want her or does she want me.” I drag a puff of my cigarette until smoke drifts out of my nostrils. “There’s just her and I and no one else.”

Sicko by Amo Jones

“I liked that he took existentially fraught free throws. I liked that he was a tenured professor in the Department of Slightly Crooked Smiles with a dual appointment in the Department of Having a Voice That Made My Skin Feel More Like Skin.”

The Fault In Our Stars by John Green

MICHELE MORRONE 365 Days (2020)

"You have to have faith and you have to have hope. Even if you don’t have any hope for us, you have to have hope for yourself. Otherwise, you will never let anyone love you."

“To the girls who never noticed Prince Charming…

…because the monster under their bed did that thing they liked with his tongue…”

Manik by Amo Jones