Everybody in Brooklyn—our kind of Brooklyn—believed in a fair fucking fight.

Last Night in Brooklyn by Xochitl Gonzalez

Everybody in Brooklyn—our kind of Brooklyn—believed in a fair fucking fight. But this, we all knew, had been dirty pool.

A good life in spite of. In spite of bad ancestors. In spite of your skin.

How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder by Nina McConigley

A good life in spite of. In spite of bad ancestors. In spite of your skin. In spite of colonialism. In spite of capitalism. In spite of nationalism. In spite of the internet. In spite of war. In spite of the patriarchy.

Depression, it was dawning on me, might simply be the absence of champagne, drugs, and friendly acquaintances with whom to share them.

Down Time by Andrew Martin

Maggie spent her time trying to solve problems; she’d be the person trying to untangle the ropes for the lifeboats as the crew sang plaintive death songs up on deck.

With music everywhere, home felt like a place I belonged.

Simply More by Cynthia Erivo

With music everywhere, home felt like a place I belonged. I could ask all the questions in the world and was never shamed for my curiosity. I could bring in as much music as I wanted and play it wherever and whenever I wanted.

Often, she said, you’ll see the least altruistic people using sincerity to throw their weight around.

Helen of Nowhere by Makenna Goodman

Helen had money. You betcha. She used to say her life was like the inside of a golden egg, and that people with normal shells wanted nothing more than to be golden. And instead of thinking about their yolks or whites, they thought only of their shells and how they were missing some kind of decoration, whereas she had the decoration and wanted it to be normal, like theirs.

the world opens up once you realise you’re never going to sort your life out

Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkehead

My conversations helped me recognise a deeper issue, too, which is the way our ceaseless efforts to get into the driver’s seat of life seem to sap it of the very sense of aliveness that makes it worth living in the first place.

And I'm off to the convent

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood

The fact was that Annabel was so disgusted by greed, by the ruination of the natural world because of it, that, like ascetics before her, the only action she could take was to remove herself, bit by bit, from the obscenity of this excess. 'Her suffering was an existential and a moral problem,' he said. 'Not a medical one.'

Her uncle was a stranger, but he had won the lottery

The Road to Tender Hearts

Some people will always ignore the sign, no matter how clear and direct it is.

He thinks things no one else thinks

The Dog of the South by Charles Portis

I asked him if he was going to British Honduras on vacation and he said, 'Vacation! Do you think I'm the kind of man who takes vacations?'