Paul Tremblay

“It was so dark it was like nothing was there in the room with us. Only the nothing was actually something because it filled my eyes and lungs and it sat on my shoulders.”

- Excerpt from A Head Full Of Ghosts, by Paul Tremblay

Cambria Brockman

“If you’re not looking for the rot between us, we all look so happy. Our happiness is contagious. Don’t get too close or you’ll catch it.”

- Excerpt from Tell Me Everything by Cambria Brockman

Madeline Miller

“In a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.”

—

“I felt poised as a hawk on a crag. My talons still held the rock, but my mind was in the air. 

‘I propose a truce,’ I said. ‘A test of sorts.’

‘What sort of test?’  He leaned forward a little. It was a gesture I would come to know. Even he could not hide everything. Any challenge, he would run to meet it. His skin smelled of labor in the sea. He knew ten years of stories. I felt keen and hungry as a bear in the spring. 

‘I have heard,’ I said, ‘that many find their trust in love.’

It surprised him, and oh, I liked the flash of that, before he covered it over. 

‘My lady, only a fool would say no to such an honor. But in truth, I think also only a fool would say yes. I am a mortal. The moment I set down the moly to join you in your bed, you may cast your spell.’ He paused. ‘Unless, of course, you were to swear an oath you will not hurt me, upon the river of the dead.’

An oath by the River Styx would hold even Zeus himself. ‘You are careful,’ I said. 

‘It seems we share that.’

No, I thought. I was not careful. I was reckless, headlong. He was another knife, I could feel it. A different sort, but a knife still. I did not care. I thought: give me the blade. Somethings are worth spilling blood for.”

—

“It was autumn by then, the light thinning, the grass crackling under foot. The month was nearly gone. We were lying in my bed. ‘I think we must leave very soon, or I’ll stay the winter.’
The window was open; the breeze passed over us. It was a trick of his, to set a sentence out like a plate on the table and see what you would put on it.”

—

“I looked into that shining gray gaze, her eyes like two hanging jewels, twisting to catch the light. She was smiling, her hand open towards me, as if ready to receive mine. When she had spoken of children, she had nearly crooned, as if to lull her own babe. But Athena had no babe, and she never would. Her only love was reason. And that has never been the same as wisdom.”

- Excerpts from Circe by Madeline Miller

Lisa Taddeo

“Often, the type of waiting women do is to make sure other women approve, so that they may also approve of themselves.”

—

“We pretend to want things we don’t want so nobody can see us not getting what we need.”

—

“Like many girls her age, Maggie is laid out before the world, unafraid, unpopulated. Men come to insert themselves, they turn a girl into a city. When they leave, their residue remains, the discoloration on the wood where the sun came through every day for many days, until one day it didn’t.“

—

“But you can’t say these things. Because Hoy and everybody else lives in denial. They won’t be honest even in their own brains let alone in a courtroom where everything you say can be used against you. There is no humanity in humans. You palm your arm to smooth down the shivering hairs. They are picking up on a breeze of self-hatred.”

- Excerpts from Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women