It was funny how the old practices always came around again. It was the rhythm of human enterprise to invent and worship some new approach, to fully reject it a generation later, to realize the need for it again a generation or two after that and then hastily reinvent it as new, usually without its original elegance. Scientists hated to look backward for anything.

What if people knew they were recycled? Would that change anything?

she never showed girly weaknesses like cellulite or crushes. she never lingered on injustices committed against her.

She liked the life she had. She loved habits. She craved a day with nothing in it, a long, quiet stretch of hours in the studio.

Can you make yourself love? Can you make yourself loved? -Lena Kaligaris

The distinction has blurred between young adult and adult books. Some of the teen books have become more sophisticated.

People left a lot of things behind when they went in the water. Their clothes, their stuff, their makeup, their fixed-up hair, their voices, their hearing, their sight—at least as the normally experienced them.