Veronica

“The Queen is controlling, the Witch is sadistic, the Hermit is fearful, and the Waif is helpless.

And each requires a different approach. Don't let the Queen get the upper hand; be wary even of accepting gifts because it engenders expectations. Don't internalize the Hermit's fears or become limited by them. Don't allow yourself to be alone with the Witch; maintain distance for your own emotional and physical safety. And with the Waif, don't get pulled into her crises and sense of victimization. Pay attention to your own tendencies to want to rescue her, which just feeds the dynamic.”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother

“No matter how happy I had been in the past I do not long for it. The present is always the moment for which I love.”
― Jamaica Kincaid, The Autobiography of My Mother

“I was a new person then, I knew things I had not known before, I knew things that you can know only if you have been through what I had just been through.”
― Jamaica Kincaid, The Autobiography of My Mother

“They walked him into the cane and then turned him around. He tried to stand bravely... They looked at Oscar and he looked at them and then he started to speak. The words coming out like they belonged to someone else, his Spanish good for once. He told them that what they were doing was wrong, that they were going to take a great love out of the world. Love was a rare thing, easily confused with a million other things, and if anybody knew this to be true it was him. He told them about Ybón and the way he loved her and how much they had risked and that they'd started to dream the same dreams and say the same words. He told them that it was only because of her love that he'd been able to do the thing that he had done, the thing they could no longer stop, told them if they killed him they would probably feel nothing and their children would probably feel nothing either, not until they were old and weak or about to be struck by a car and then they would sense him waiting for them on the other side and over there he wouldn't b no fatboy or dork or kid no girl had ever loved; over there he'd be a hero, an avenger. Because anything you can dream (he put his hand up) you can be.

They waited respectfully for him to finish and then they said, their faces slowly disappearing in the gloom, Listen, we'll let you go if you tell us what "fuego" means in English.

Fire, he blurted out, unable to help himself.

Oscar—”
― Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao