“I wanted to tell him then how loneliness can become a tangible thing, after a while. It’s something that you carry with you on your shoulder, hold up like a friend with a twisted ankle. It sits with you and walks the streets with you. It’s a selfish thing and it refuses to let go or even split its attention. Of course, like a particularly annoying itch, you can convince yourself for a while that it’s not there. You can go to libraries and sit with friends and drink more coffee than your body can handle and you can feel surrounded and happy. But eventually you have to scratch it. Loneliness steals you away from the world, as if you’ve been cut loose and you’re lost, untethered, somewhere far above everyone else. Just you and this feeling that you just need someone to put a hand on your shoulder and turn you around, to look at you and tell you the three words that matter most: You’re not alone. Don’t be scared. I am here. It’s not about love or lust or any other inadequate word; it’s about being touched and realising that you are no longer by yourself.” LoveLoneliness Book:Sacré Noir Source: Sacré Noir
“It all comes down to this: when you recognise your loneliness in another person, when you see desperation so familiar to yours written across someone else, you can’t just let them leave.” LoveLoneliness Book:Sacré Noir Source: Sacré Noir
“A week feels like a year when you’re seventeen and in love. A twenty minute drive might as well be an ocean. But we were together again and the whole world was rejoicing, even the gravel crunched melodiously under our feet as we danced onward through the night.” LoveHappinessSummerDistance Book:Sacré Noir Source: Sacré Noir
“In the end, there wasn’t a right thing to say, only a right thing to do. So I sat further up on the bed and put my hand on Manuelle’s cheek and our mouths did the rest, finding each other even though our eyes were closed. I ceased to care about anything that wasn’t her body or mine as we wrapped ourselves around each other on the flower patterned quilt and I was closer to her than I’d ever been before. It wasn’t that we left the rest of the world behind; it was the opposite. I could feel the world turning underneath us, I could hear birds outside and people laughing, and I felt that I was part of it at last. With no part of my skin not touching Manuelle’s, I was part of the world at last. Or maybe I’m romanticizing, and we were just two kids doing everything two kids can do in a cramped room at the back of a caravan.” LoveSex Book:Sacré Noir Source: Sacré Noir