Kartik

“Besides, as a model, Lucky was used to people taking pleasure in proving she was an idiot. It was a kind of protection against inadequacy, she assumed; if she was pretty but dumb, they could still feel superior, even a little righteous, finding, in their own lack of marketable beauty, a confirmation of their higher intelligence. But if the two weren’t causal? If it was possible to be both professionally attractive and smart? Then their own average looks served no purpose other than to disappoint, with Lucky acting as the hapless reminder. She’d found, in general, it was easier to keep her mouth shut and let people think whatever comforting thoughts they wanted about her. People seemed to hate her less that way.”
― Coco Mellors, Blue Sisters

“When my patients ask me what mental health means, here’s what I tell them: Mental health doesn’t involve the aim of eradicating uncomfortable emotions and life stressors. Rather, mental health involves practicing healthy ways to roll with, and grow from, life’s punches. It involves a state of mental functioning in which a person can experience productivity, satisfied relationships, meaning and purpose, high quality of life and possess the ability to cope with adversity.”
― Jonathan N. Stea, Mind the Science: Saving your Mental Health from the Wellness Industry

“Bianchi’s landmark paper on microchimerism describes pregnancy as enacting a ‘long-term, low-grade chimeric state in the human female’. From the moment I was pregnant, I didn’t just feel different. I was different. I am different. On a cellular level. I would never be singular again.”
― Lucy Jones, Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood

“His hair, which had been wheat blond during childhood, was now the dark ash blond of driftwood, and his eyes were the dangerous gray of the North Sea but sometimes, rarely, flecked with the shifting blues of sea glass. It seemed so strange that Will had only learned these things after traveling thousands of miles away from Martin, but now he couldn’t look at his friend without thinking of the ocean. It was as if his mind had taken the source of all his nightmares and mapped it onto the face of the person he loved best, as if to remind him that maybe the sea wasn’t all bad.”
― Cat Sebastian, Two Rogues Make a Right