“Betsy Manwill, Mrs. Richardson thought, had always been timid. She’d always needed a good push to do anything, even things she wanted to do. You had to give her permission for every little thing: to wear lipstick, to buy a pretty dress, to put her hand up in class. Wishy-washy. She needed a firm hand.”

— Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“The microscopic focus on each thing Izzy did, turning it this way and that, scrutinizing it for signs of weakness or disaster.”

“To a parent, your child wasn't just a person: your child was a place, a kind of Narnia, a vast eternal place where the present you were living and the past you remembered and the future you longed for all existed at once, You could see it every time you looked at her: layered on her face.”

— Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“No one, she had learned from experience, could stand such silence for long. If you waited long enough, someone would start talking, and more often than not they would give you a chance to press further, to crack the conversation open and scoop out what you needed to know.”

— Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

  • “Two months later she was pregnant; a month later, she was not. Each time she told no one, hoping that if she sealed the knowledge tight inside her, it would stay and grow.”

    — Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

  • “People traded jokes as gleefully as children with baseball cards.”

    — Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

  • “And let her fantasy go, like a balloon soaring into the sky until it burst.”

    — Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

  • “When she looked down, she saw no safety net, only a forest of skyscrapers stabbing upward like needles upon which she would be impaled.”

    — Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“The docent giving the class a tour was elderly and thin and looked as if all the juice had been sucked out o him through a straw via his pursed mouth.”

— Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“There’s a boy in that coffin.”

— Christine Pride and Jo Piazza, We Are Not Like Them

“Justin’s mother grips a tissue in her clenched fist. Otherwise she focuses straight ahead, tearless, stoic. I know that look. I’ve seen it on Gigi’s face and those of many of the other church ladies, sometimes even my own Momma’s—the look of women who have weathered so many brutal blows, whose scars have hardened into an armor of steely resolve. Now there ain’t no point crying about it.”

— Christine Pride and Jo Piazza, We Are Not Like Them

“Sometimes we need to swallow our pride and reach out. Even when we don’t know what to say and we’re afraid of messing everything up by saying the wrong thing. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to talk about something. All that matters is that you try. The longer you let something go, the easier it is to stay silent, and the silence is where the resentment starts to fester and rot.”

— Christine Pride and Jo Piazza, We Are Not Like Them

“It’s okay. It’s okay. He whispers the words to himself because there’s no one else to do it.”

— Christine Pride and Jo Piazza, We Are Not Like Them

  • “I idolized her growing up and told her as much on my first day of work five months ago. “I loved watching you as a kid. I dressed up like you for two straight Halloweens,” I gushed. Instead of her being flattered, I was met with a chill that still hasn’t thawed despite my repeated attempts to ingratiate myself.”

    Christine Pride and Jo Piazza, We Are Not Like Them

  • “It’s like this now all over the city; gentrification creeping into every corner, as relentless as water finding its way through every crack, the grit and grime replaced by sleek lofts and craft breweries.”

    Christine Pride and Jo Piazza, We Are Not Like Them

  • “There’s a beat before we crack up at how far this is from the truth. The only thing Jen’s mom, Louise, has ever been good for are dirty jokes, dirty martinis, and dirty looks.”

    Christine Pride and Jo Piazza, We Are Not Like Them

  • “The anger in his voice, I recognize. It's an anger that's been bubbling up in me these last few days, an anger I haven't really experienced before and don't know quite what to do with.”

    Christine Pride and Jo Piazza, We Are Not Like Them

“I don’t want to be around people who get so drunk they pass out and eventually black out the nights they’re lucky to be living.”

— Adam Silvera, They Both Die at the End

“Alicia stared at me. Eyes like lamps, unblinking.”

— Alex Michaelides, The Silent Patient

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2023