Fight Club

What four in the morning does to water, air, and books.

But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drink, the very air I breathe, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at four o’clock in the morning.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle · Haruki Murakami

The hunger of waiting for a touch that might undo you.

I want to reach out and grab his hand and hold it to me, right over my heart, right where it aches the most. I don’t know if doing that would heal me or make my heart break entirely, but either way this constant hungry waiting would be over.

Matched · Ally Condie

The difference between being remembered and being known.

Last night, she told him hers was Jess. She lied, but only because she can’t say her real name—one of the vicious little details tucked like nettles in the grass. Hidden barbs designed to sting. What is a person, if not the marks they leave behind? She has learned to step between the thorny weeds, but there are some cuts that cannot be avoided—a memory, a photograph, a name.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue · V.E. Schwab