Leah W

“Once when I testified before a Senate Committee about LSD, Bobby Kennedy asked me how many people I knew smoked marijuana. Brazenly I announced, “Everyone I know smokes marijuana except my grandmother.”
― Eve Babitz, Eve's Hollywood

“The presumption to rule the entire world for the benefit of all its inhabitants was startling. Evolution has made Homo sapiens, like other social mammals, a xenophobic creature. Sapiens instinctively divide humanity into two parts, ‘we’ and ‘they’. We are people like you and me, who share our language, religion and customs. We are all responsible for each other, but not responsible for them. We were always distinct from them, and owe them nothing. We don’t want to see any of them in our territory, and we don’t care an iota what happens in their territory. They are barely even human. In the language of the Dinka people of the Sudan, ‘Dinka’ simply means ‘people’. People who are not Dinka are not people. The Dinka’s bitter enemies are the Nuer. What does the word Nuer mean in Nuer language? It means ‘original people’. Thousands of miles from the Sudan deserts, in the frozen ice-lands of Alaska and north-eastern Siberia, live the Yupiks. What does Yupik mean in Yupik language? It means ‘real people’. 3”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“It seems success takes you away from what you know, he said, while failure condemns you to it.”
― Rachel Cusk, Outline

“I’m aware I’m making the low continuous moaning noise of a fearful cow, but I can’t seem to stop. This is the worst story I’ve ever heard. This is worse than Ethan Frome.”
― Patricia Lockwood, Priestdaddy: A Memoir