Louis Muñoz

“he turned his back on the chosen people because he felt chosen himself. By whom, he couldn’t say. Not God, not Christ—it was a source of lasting sadness to Elena that her husband showed no interest in her religion. America, perhaps—Michael Sterling was not a religious man, but he had an unswerving faith in his adopted country.”
― Simon Tolkien, The Palace at the End of the Sea

“Michael and Elena lived in a perfectly separated alignment like two heavenly bodies orbiting each other with an equal gravity. They loved each other with a happy superficiality, and so when conflict arose, as it had now, they lacked the tools to find resolution and instead crashed against each other until they were spent.”
― Simon Tolkien, The Palace at the End of the Sea

“I fear that, as a society, we do not give our animal companions enough credit for what they can teach us. For what they reveal about us. But throughout history, our interactions with animals have been profound reminders of our essential capacity for empathy.”
― Farah Naz Rishi, The Flightless Birds of New Hope

“it was the kind of saccharine consolation offered to someone about to make the kind of mistake they couldn’t walk back from, a sticky, cloying Werther’s caramel meant to tempt someone back from the edge: Please, dear, life is actually worth living—see? Here’s a candy. But maybe, sometimes, that was all anyone could offer: a caramel, a platitude, a placeholder for the hope they didn’t quite know how else to give. Something small and inelegant, maybe even absurd—but something, nonetheless.”
― Farah Naz Rishi, The Flightless Birds of New Hope