Things I like

"In his forty-third year William Stoner learned what others, much younger, had learned before him; that the person one loves at first is not the person one loves at last, and that love is not an end but a process through which one person attempts to know another."

—Stoner by John Williams

"You can either perform a piece as though you're in the midst of what's happening, or as a narrator," he said. "You know, 'Once upon a time, there was...' That can be more expressive. It frees the listener's imagination. It doesn't dictate."

—Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon

"I’ve been thinking about what a relief it is to find that everyone is pretty much a disappointment. This may sound cynical but I don’t mean it as a bad thing. Another way to say it is “everyone is struggling, even the bullies.”

—Untamed Melody by Andrew Bird

Maybe instead of strings it's stories things are made of, an infinite number of tiny vibrating stories; once upon a time they all were part of one big giant superstory, except it got broken up into a jillion different pieces, that's why no story on its own makes any sense, and so what you have to do in a life is try and weave it back together, my story into your story, our stories into all the other people's we know, until you've got something that to God or whoever might look like a letter or even a whole word...

—Skippy Dies by Paul Murray