I couldn't have said it better myself

May 23

“From the TV screen Donald Draper peered through his own cigarette smoke, sipping whiskey from a glass. Another plane roared over the rooftops. Mad Men. The sixties. USA. Women wearing decent clothes. Decent drinks in decent glasses. Decent cigarettes without menthol and filters. The days when what didn’t kill you made you stronger. He had bought only the first season. Watched it again and again. He wasn’t sure he would like the next series.” Phantom by Jo Nesbø

“It was three whole months they had been together. Then she took the heart out of him and ate it.
‘Jesus,’ he said.
‘And here we are,’ she said.” Wistful England by Kevin Barry

“With her steps’ fading, the summer went, even as the sun came higher across the rooftops and warmed the stone ledge and the slates, and I looked out across the still, quiet city, and I sat there for hours and for months and for years.” Across the Rooftops by Kevin Barry

May 13

“And now we are walking back to Hanover House. The dogs pull the sled with the bodies on it. Alec walks beside it. Parker drives the dogs, and I walk behind him. We are following our own outward trail, and that of our pursuers, printed deep into the snow. I find that I have learnt, without realising it, to identify tracks. Every so often I see a print that I know is mine, and I step on it, to rub it out. This country is scored with such marks; slender traces of human desire. But these trails, like this bitter path, are fragile, winterworn, and when the snow falls again, or when it thaws in spring, all trace of our passing will vanish.
Even so, three of these tracks have outlasted the men who made them.” The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney

“When I feel melancholy, and that is quite often nowadays, I remind myself that he trembled when he touched me; that I was once someone’s muse.” The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney

“I used to think, when I was a girl, and even later when I was in the asylum, that when people married they never felt alone again. At the time I doubted I ever would; I assumed I was destined to be an outcast from society, or worse, a spinster.” The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney

“How could I have prevented it coming to this? Probably Ann is right to deride me; I am incapable of raising a family, even though I used to despise women who thought it was all that mattered. Not that I have produced anything else of worth.” The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney

May 6

“What do you reckon Galloway got from Santy Claus?” Dunbar asked. “A set of fangs to go with them rattles he’s wearing atop his head?”
“Maybe some rat poison for to season his victuals,” Snipes suggested.
“That’s what I probably ought to have got instead of this hat,” Dunbar said. “Since the cold’s settled in the rats has pretty much laid claim to my stringhouse. You’d think they was having a revival the way they’re packing in.”
“Wouldn’t do no good,” Ross said. “I used some of that Paris Green in my stringhouse and it’s the stoutest poison going. Them rats ate it like it was no more than salt on popcorn.”
“What about them traps at the commissary you bait with cheese?” Dunbar asked. “You all tried them?”
“These is some bully rats,” Ross said. “They’d likely haul the traps down to the commissary and turn them back in for a rebate, same as you would a sody bottle.” Serena by Ron Rash

“Well, I thought I saw it,” Dunbar said gloomily. “I guess sometimes you’ve got the hope-fors so much it makes you imagine all sorts of things.” Serena by Ron Rash