Ky

“Nonstalgia (noun) The unsettling sensation that you are never be able to fully access the past; that once you are departed from an event, some essential quality of it is lost forever. A reminder to remember: just because the sharpness of the sadness has faded does not mean that it was not, once, terrible. It means only that time and space, creatures of infinite girth and tenderness, have stepped between the two of you, and they are keeping you safe as they were once unable to.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

“I imagine that, one day, I will invite young queers over for tea and cheese platters and advice, and I will be able to tell them: you can be hurt by people who look just like you. Not only can it happen, it probably will, because the world is full of hurt people who hurt people. Even if the dominant culture considers you an anomaly, that doesn’t mean you can’t be common, common as fucking dirt.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

“But some lesbians tried to restrict the definition of abuse to men’s actions. Butches might abuse their femmes, but only because of their adopted masculinity. Abusers were using “male privilege.” (To borrow lesbian critic Andrea Long Chu’s phrase, they were guilty of “[smuggling patriarchy] into lesbian utopia.”) Some argued that consensual S&M was part of the problem. Women who were women did not abuse their girlfriends; proper lesbians would never do such a thing.47 There was also the narrative that it was, simply, complicated. The burden of the pressure of straight society! Lesbians abuse each other!”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

“Maybe he didn’t write her poems or serenade her with songs or come home with expensive gifts. But no other boy had gone the wrong way on the train for hours every day just because he liked sitting next to her while she spoke.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove