Connie Collins Johnson

“That was the only thing that had got him through the four years of blood and madness: Know exactly where your gun is when you doze for ten minutes in your dugout; always check your gas mask; see that your men have understood their orders to the letter. You don't think ahead in years or months: you think about this hour and maybe the next. Anything else is speculation" p. 33”
― M. L. Stedman, The Light Between Oceans

“On the girl's brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“If you'd bothered to ask me, Clark, if you'd bothered to consult me just once about this so-called fun outing of ours, I could have told you. I hate horses, and horse racing. Always have. But you didn't bother to ask me. You decided what you thought you'd like me to do, and you went ahead and did it. You did what everyone else does. You decided for me.”
― Jojo Moyes, Me Before You

“And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind of world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go