Mr.

“People don’t want to know,” he whispered, not looking up.

“Know what?”

“What makes them uncomfortable,” Larkin specified. “Sometimes they don’t know what to say, don’t want to make a bad situation worse. Other times, they only pretend to not know because the empathy required is too big a burden. They pull back. They become distant. They ask how you are the same way they ask if it looks like rain or if you watched that Mets game on TV. People don’t really want to know.”
― C.S. Poe, Madison Square Murders

“If you dare tell me he’s Odysseus’s son as if that’s some sacred charm, I will scream,” she answers, clear as the ringing of the hollow drum. “I will wail and rend my hair, the whole thing. So help me, Hera, I will do it.” Sweetheart, I whisper, I’m here for it. Many is the time my husband has returned from his frolics and I’ve turned on the waterworks, rent my garments, flung myself upon the ground and sworn that I shall die, scratched at my eyes, drawn blood from my celestial skin and beaten my fists against his chest. It doesn’t change his behaviour long-term, but at least I get to embarrass him some tiny, tiny fraction of the way he humiliates, demeans, dishonours and diswomans me. So you do the wailing; I’ll bring the olives.”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“I can sense that he has a powerful personality in his own quiet way.”
― Naja Marie Aidt, When Death Takes Something From You Give It Back

“Because if you act on loving a human, your form will be revoked and you will be nothing but foam upon the sea.”
― Natasha Bowen, Skin of the Sea