Sonja Yoerg

• "But once children develop a theory of mind, once they get that not everybody sees and knows what they do, their horizons explode. Hide-and-seek works because they don’t leave bits of themselves sticking out. Secrets become possible. Telling the truth becomes optional. And emotions get complicated. The moment you see yourself as others see you, you become self-conscious. Welcome to embarrassment and shame. And empathy. There is a bright side."

• "Isn’t that what love is, the belief that you exist in the private world of someone else’s mind as a beautiful, cherished being? Perhaps that’s the problem with love: it’s unverifiable."

• "Blind spots are one example of the guessing and filling in that go on routinely in the brain, all in the name of efficiency. The world is fairly predictable, so it makes sense for the brain to rely on expectations, to see what is usually there, and not bother to build the world from scratch every time you open your eyes. The object on the side of the highway appears to be a truck tire, not a dead body, because that’s more likely. Most of the time, the truth doesn’t matter."

• "Perhaps everyone has stories they keep in a lockbox, stories they are not willing to own much less share. But if you don’t acknowledge your own history—all of it, especially the underside—then aren’t you creating blind spots of your own?"

~ Excerpts from Stories We Never Told, by Sonja Yoerg

Leigh Bardugo

• “If she suddenly threw herself in a river or off a building or into traffic, there would be plenty of warning signs to point to. Did she seem depressed? She was distant. She didn’t make many friends. She was struggling in her classes. All true. But would it have mattered if she’d been someone else? If she’d been a social butterfly, they would have said she liked to drink away her pain. If she’d been a straight-A student, they would have said she’d been eaten alive by her perfectionism. There were always excuses for why girls died.”

• “That was what magic did. It revealed the heart of who you'd been before life took away your belief in the possible. It gave back the world all lonely children longed for.”

• “Sometimes it took Alex and Hellie hours, sometimes days, but they always came back. There was too much world. There were too many choices, and those only seemed to lead to more choices. That was the business of living, and neither of them had ever acquired the skill.”

-Excerpts from Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

Claire McGowan

• "Now that I’d lost you, it seemed to me the hardest thing a human would ever have to face was how to live without the person their heart was tied to. Every day I had to remind my brain and body I was never going to see you again. Remind my skin it would never feel your hands again. Remind my hands they would never touch your back as you slept. Never. I don’t think humans are really built to understand what that means. I told myself it should have been easy. All I had to do was go into my house, and shut the door, and live out the rest of my life without you."

• "When you hear stories about women who are married to serial killers – Sonia Sutcliffe, for example – or whose husbands turn out to have four other families stashed away, you always say, how could she not know? She must have known. But I realised now that some people were just so good at lying that you not only believed them, you actually did your best to. You so much want to believe that what they tell you is true, you do the lying for them."

~ Excerpts from The Other Wife, by Claire McGowan

T. Greenwood

• “Grief blanketed the city like an early snow that September. Al knew that if Sally were still there, if she’d never left on that bus with Frank LaSalle, Ella might have held her a little more closely that night, clinging in the way that parents do when tragedy strikes. When there is that knock, knock on someone else’s door reminding you that all of this, every last thing is precarious, perilous. How sad it was that grief had a shelf life, he thought. It’s only fresh and raw for so long before it begins to spoil. And soon enough, it would be replaced by a newer, brighter heartache – the old one discarded and eventually forgotten. It was clear that Sally had already begun to slip from their collective memory. Women clung just a little less tightly to their children. Not every man sitting alone at a lunch counter was a possible kidnapper. And now the next monster had arrived, stalking the streets. There wasn’t enough room on the shelf for this old, tired sorrow. Maybe we can only suffer so much, Al thought; communal capacity was a shallow well.”

• “Tonight, as she studied the constellations, she thought of Sally, and wondered what happens after a star dies. Does the light just fade away? She hoped not. What she wished for, under that reliable sky, was that it was a brilliant explosion. A donation first, and then all that beautiful brightness would shatter and scatter across the heavens into so much luminous stardust.”

-Excerpts from Rust & Stardust by A. Greenwood

Stuart Turton

• "I’d assumed everything was lost, but now I perceive this isn’t the case. I can sense my memories just out of reach. They have weight and shape, like shrouded furniture in a darkened room. I’ve simply misplaced the light to see them by."

• “You doubt my intentions?” he says, prickling at my hesitation. “Of course I doubt your intentions. You wear a mask and you talk in riddles, and I don’t for a minute believe you brought me here just to solve a mystery. You’re hiding something.” “And you think stripping me of my disguise will reveal it?” he scoffs. “A face is a mask of another sort. You know that better than most."

• “I recall Bell’s conversation with the butler at the door and how afraid they both were. My hand throbs from the pain of Ravencourt’s cane as he struggled toward the library, shortly before Jim Rashton heaved a sack of stolen drugs out through the front door. I hear the light steps of Donald Davies on the marble, as he fled the house after his first meeting with the Plague Doctor, and the laughter of Edward Dance’s friends, even as he stood silent. So many memories and secrets, so many burdens. Every life has such weight. I don’t know how anybody carries even one.”

• “The Plague Doctor claimed Blackheath was meant to rehabilitate us, but bars can’t build better men and misery can only break what goodness remains. This place pinches out the hope in people, and without that hope, what use is love or compassion or kindness? Whatever the intention behind its creation, Blackheath speaks to the monster in us, and I have no intention of indulging mine any longer. It’s had free rein long enough.”

- Excerpts from The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton

Minka Kent

• "Now I know with absolute certainty that people are selfish. They lie. Cheat. Steal. Hurt. Manipulate. Keep secrets. Wear proverbial masks. Even kill. Some of us can't help but be self-serving, letting our egos and ids drive the car as we sit powerless in the passenger seat."

• "Lying on the spot has become a bit of a specialty of mine over the years. I wasn't quite thirteen when I realized how many doors would open for you if you simply told people what they wanted to hear. No one's interested in the truth. Most of us just think we are. Sonya taught me that. At the end of the day, we just want to believe whatever makes us feel good inside. Whatever makes us feel safe. Whatever lets us sleep at night. It's a fact I've always used to my advantage."

• "I don't love lying to Sam. She doesn't deserve it. She's the only person on this earth who would take a bullet for me, and that loyalty isn't lost on me. But her moral compass was going to get in the way of this entire plan, and for that reason, I couldn't have her in on it. I'm hopeful someday she'll realize I did this all for her. And for us. So we could have the future we've only ever dreamed of. So we could rest our heads at night without a care in the world."

~ Excerpts from When I Was You, by Minka Kent

Erin Morgenstern

• “It is these aficionados, these reveurs, who see the details in the bigger picture of the circus. They see the nuance of the costumes, the intricacy of the signs. They buy sugar flowers and do not eat them, wrapping them in paper instead and carefully bringing them home. They are enthusiasts, devotees. Addicts. Something about the circus stirs their souls, and they ache for it when it is absent. They seek each other out, these people of such specific like mind. They tell of how they found the circus, how those first few steps were like magic. Like stepping into a fairy tale under a curtain of stars. They pontificate upon the fluffiness of the popcorn, the sweetness of the chocolate. They spent hours discussing the quality of the light, the heat of the bonfire. They sit over their drinks smiling like children and they relish being surrounded by kindred spirits, if only for an evening. When they depart, they shake hands and embrace like old friends, even if they have only just met, and as they go their separate ways they feel less alone than they had before.”

• “‘But I’m not… special,’ Bailey says. ‘Not the way they are. I’m not anyone important.’ ‘I know,’ Celia says. ‘You’re not destined or chosen. I wish I could tell you that you were if that would make it easier, but it’s not true. You’re in the right place at the right time, and you care enough to do what needs to be done. Sometimes that’s enough.’”

• “Someone needs to tell those tales. When the battles are fought and won and lost, when the pirates find their treasures and the dragons eat their foes for breakfast with a nice cup of Lapsang souchong, someone needs to tell their bits of overlapping narrative. There's magic in that. It's in the listener, and for each and every ear it will be different, and it will affect them in ways they can never predict. From the mundane to the profound. You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows what they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift. Your sister may be able to see the future, but you yourself can shape it, boy. Do not forget that... there are many kinds of magic, after all.”

~ Excerpts from The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern

Emily Fridlund

• “By their nature, it came to me, children were freaks. They believed impossible things to suit themselves, thought their fantasies were the center of the world. They were the best kinds of quacks, if that’s what you wanted—pretenders who didn’t know they were pretending at all.”

• “I didn’t know how much time I’d have before they returned, so I didn’t risk taking a bath – though I was tempted. Instead I stood under scalding water in the shower for one magnificent minute, letting needles of water pluck open some feeling of woe, some feeling of desolation I hadn’t known I’d felt. A capsized feeling, a sense of the next thing already coming. I toweled off, wiggled into the cool thrift-store slip. I couldn’t see myself in the mirror for the steam. I couldn’t make out whether I looked more like a little kid trying too hard or a teenage girl with secret worries, like boys and college. Back in the bedroom, Paul was sleeping with his mouth open. I arranged my limbs on my own bed so they were splayed out, exposed. After a moment, I changed my mind and put my legs in a coil, and I waited for Patra to find me like that. Curled up in my nighty, facing the wall. Unconcerned about anything.”

• “I’ve found that some people who’ve done something bad will just go ahead and condemn everyone else around them to avoid feeling shitty themselves. As if that even works. Other types of people, and I’m not saying you’re this, necessarily, but I’m just putting it out there, will defend people like me on principle because when their turns come around, they want that so badly for themselves.”

• “Maybe if I’d been someone else I’d see it differently. But isn’t that the crux of the problem? Wouldn’t we all act differently if we were someone else?”

-Excerpts from History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund

Blake Crouch

• “What a strange thing to consider imagining a world into being with nothing but words, intention, and desire. It’s a troubling paradox—I have total control, but only to the extent I have control over myself. My emotions. My inner storm. The secret engines that drive me. If there are infinite worlds, how do I find the one that is uniquely, specifically mine? I stare at the page and begin to write down every detail of my Chicago that comes to mind. I paint my life with words. The sounds of the children in my neighborhood walking to school together, their voices like a stream flowing over rocks —high and burbling. Graffiti on the faded white brick of a building three blocks from my house that was so artfully done it was never painted over. I meditate on the intricacies of my home. The fourth step on the staircase that always creaks. The downstairs bathroom with a leaky faucet. The way my kitchen smells as coffee brews first thing in the morning. All the tiny, seemingly insignificant details upon which my world hangs.”

• “Imagine you’re a fish, swimming in a pond. You can move forward and back, side to side, but never up out of the water. If someone were standing beside the pond, watching you, you’d have no idea they were there. To you, that little pond is an entire universe. Now imagine that someone reaches down and lifts you out of the pond. You see that what you thought was the entire world is only a small pool. You see other ponds. Trees. The sky above. You realize you’re a part of a much larger and more mysterious reality than you had ever dreamed of.”

~ Excerpts from Dark Matter, by Blake Crouch

• "In this moment, he is a man without memory, and the sense of being adrift in time is a crushing, existential horror. Like waking from a troubled sleep, when the lines between reality and dreams are still murky and you're calling out to ghosts."

• “Lately, he’s been reading the great philosophers and physicists. Plato to Aristotle. From Newton’s absolute time to Einstein’s relativistic. One truth seems to be surfacing from the cacophony of theories and philosophies—no one has a clue. Saint Augustine said it perfectly back in the fourth century: “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.” Some days, it feels like a river flowing past him. Others, like something he’s sliding down the surface of. Sometimes, it feels like it’s all already happened, and he’s just experiencing incremental slivers, moment to moment, his consciousness like the needle in the grooves of a record that already exists—beginning, middle, and end. As if our choices, our fates, were locked from our first breath. But on a night like this, of a restless mind and dreams of ghosts, time feels secondary to the true prime mover—memory. Perhaps memory is fundamental, the thing from which time emerges.”

• "Life with a cheat code isn't life. Our existence isn't something to be engineered or optimized for the avoidance of pain. That's what it is to be human—the beauty and the pain, each meaningless without the other."

• Been meaning to ask you something,” Slade says, interrupting her reverie. She looks at him across the table. “Why memory? Obviously, you were into this before your mom got sick.” She swirls the wine in her glass, sees the reflection of them sitting at the table in the two-story windows that look out into oceanic darkness.“Because memory…is everything. Physically speaking, a memory is nothing but a specific combination of neurons firing together—a symphony of neural activity. But in actuality, it’s the filter between us and reality. You think you’re tasting this wine, hearing the words I’m saying, in the present, but there’s no such thing. The neural impulses from your taste buds and your ears get transmitted to your brain, which processes them and dumps them into working memory—so by the time you know you’re experiencing something, it’s already in the past. Already a memory.” Helena leans forward, snaps her fingers. “Just what your brain does to interpret a simple stimulus like that is incredible. The visual and auditory information arrive at your eyes and ears at different speeds, and then are processed by your brain at different speeds. Your brain waits for the slowest bit of stimulus to be processed, then reorders the neural inputs correctly, and lets you experience them together, as a simultaneous event—about half a second after what actually happened. We think we’re perceiving the world directly and immediately, but everything we experience is this carefully edited, tape-delayed reconstruction.” She lets him sit with that for a moment as she takes another glorious sip of wine. Slade asks, “What about flashbulb memories? The super-vivid ones imbued with extreme personal significance and emotion?” “Right. That gets at another illusion. The paradox of the specious present. What we think of as the ‘present’ isn’t actually a moment. It’s a stretch of recent time—an arbitrary one. The last two or three seconds, usually. But dump a load of adrenaline into your system, get the amygdala to rev up, and you create that hyper-vivid memory, where time seems to slow down, or stop entirely. If you change the way your brain processes an event, you change the duration of the ‘now.’ You actually change the point at which the present becomes the past. It’s yet another way that the concept of the present is just an illusion, made out of memories and constructed by our brain.” Helena sits back, embarrassed by her enthusiasm, suddenly feeling the wine going to her head. “Which is why memory,” she says. “Why neuroscience.” She taps her temple. “If you want to understand the world, you have to start by understanding—truly understanding—how we experience it.” Slade nods, says, “‘It is evident the mind does not know things immediately, but only by the intervention of the ideas it has of them.’” Helena laughs with surprise. “So you’ve read John Locke.” “What?” Slade asks. “Just because I’m a tech guy, I never picked up a book? What you’re talking about is using neuroscience to pierce the veil of perception—to see reality as it truly is.” “Which is, by definition, impossible. No matter how much we understand about how our perceptions work, ultimately we’ll never escape our limitations.” Slade just smiles.

~ Excerpts from Recursion, by Blake Crouch