Reader’s Choice

Book Reviews

The Book Mail

Get our newsletter for reviews, quotes, and bookish updates—straight to your inbox!

Quote Corner

I will love you when you are shrivelled and ancient…We might have a mortal lifetime, but it will belong to us and no one else.

Ariadne, Jennifer Saint

Life is as messy as a bag whose owner never cleans it out. You have no idea when you might reach in and pull out a piece of old trash, and you’re afraid someone is going to look through your bag someday.

I Want to Die but I want to Eat Tteokbokki , Baek Sehee

No man is an island, but a woman can be if she needs to be.

Beautiful Ugly, Alice Feeney

You have your regrets and I have mine. I sit on the porch step for a while, thinking about life’s tricks, the ones we see, the ones we don’t.

Heart the Lover, Lily King

Things happen and we have to learn to live with them, as long as suicide is off the table, that is. If we can find meaning in them, fine, but even if we can’t, we still have to live with them.

Blue Sisters, Coco Mellors

It’s strange how people can come into your life and disappear from it. It makes you wonder if they were ever really there.

When Haru Was Here, Dustin Thao

Living with the knowledge that we will die may be frightening and tragic, but knowing we will never die would be unbearable. We might wish for a longer life, or a happier one, but how could any of us endure a life that went on forever?

When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Harold S. Kushner

Such fondness at certain moments makes the heart cold and the soul heavy. Your hand is cold, mine burns like fire. How blind you are, Nastenka!…Oh, how unbearable a happy person is sometimes.

White Nights, Fyodor Dostoevsky

People talk about how they’d do things differently if they could go back to a time of their choosing […] But I’m not sure I could do any better the second time around. We are who we are destined to be. No matter what decision I made or path I took. I’d have ended up here in this moment.

Keep it in the Family, John Marrs

When lying in bed started to bother me, I got up without actually getting dressed and sat down in my chair, gazing out the window as I wondered what had brought about this awful state of mind. Why did I have to feel so awful all the time? How had I let things get so bad that I was unable to do work or anything else? What was going on?

All the Lovers in the Night, Mieko Kawakami

Insights