Abby

“But, perversely, the flittering of the butterflies had always remained more important.”
― Vita Sackville-West, All Passion Spent

“If one wanted beauty, one had only to rest one's eyes on her, so fine and old and lovely, like an ivory carving; flowing down like water into her chair, so slight and supple were her limbs, the firelight casting a flush of rose over her features and snowy hair. Youth had no beauty like the beauty of an old face; the face of youth was an unwritten page. Youth could never sit as still as that, in absolute repose, as though all haste, all movement, were over and done with, and nothing left but waiting and acquiescence.”
― Vita Sackville-West, All Passion Spent

“According to his lights, he gave you all you could desire. He merely killed you, that's all. Men do kill women. Most women enjoy being killed; so I am told. Being a woman, I daresay that even you took a certain pleasure in the process.”
― Vita Sackville-West, All Passion Spent

“Ah! Here I am reverting to the third-person pronoun. What makes it so hard to write "I"? Just one letter, and I would become the center around which things are divided up and arranged. My brother, Sa'id has his "I," which surprised me for so long. An enormous, gigantic, terrifying "I" that showed up and overshadowed everything around him. His "I" flies on awful wings of colorful feathers that blind your sight. Resounding, rumbling, chaotic. But as soon as the wind blows, they scatter. Thurayya's "I" was solid, firm, heavy, severe. There was no ambiguity about it. Hard as ice. No, even harder! Thurayya drained my body of all its "I." She pressed it down and squeezed until she turned it into nothing.”
― Najwa Barakat, Mister N