Ava James

“It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

“The more routine his days, the more unruly his nights. He woke after midnight, when the dormitory was dead, starting at imagined sounds—footsteps at the threshold, leather slapping the ceiling. He squinted at the darkness—nothing. Then he was up for hours, in a spell, agitated by rickety thoughts and weakened by an ebbing of the spirit. It wasn’t Spencer that undid him, or a supervisor or a new antagonist slumbering in room 2, rather it was that he’d stopped fighting. In keeping his head down, in his careful navigation so that he made it to lights-out without mishap, he fooled himself that he had prevailed. That he had outwitted Nickel because he got along and kept out of trouble. In fact he had been ruined. He was like one of those Negroes Dr. King spoke of in his letter from jail, so complacent and sleepy after years of oppression that they had adjusted to it and learned to sleep in it as their only bed.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys

“The counselor had said that was what trauma could do. It got stuck and replayed memories on a loop sometimes in our minds and other times in our bodies. And it didn't mean Sade was broken or weak, it just meant that she carried an experience that shaped who she was now. She would learn to how to live, in spite of it.”
― Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, Where Sleeping Girls Lie

“That was the problem with love. It created blind spots in your mind. Bloodred flags were blocked out by high levels of dopamine and the trick of a gentlemanly smile.”
― Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, Where Sleeping Girls Lie