Sophia

“If you don't like my peaches, don't shake my tree.”
― Shirley Jackson

“Instead I walked towards the man, meeting him halfway. “Just miss a train?” I heard myself ask. He shrugged. I could not believe I was engaging this man in conversation. He was disgusting up close, with mottled, pitted skin and a shaggy grown out haircut. “I hate that,” I said. “Especially at night. Especially at night when you’re waiting for a train and there’s someone there. And you never know. I mean, in the city you just never know who you’re dealing with. They might have a knife, or a gun, or whatever. They might, I don’t know, be the kind of person who hates men who hang out in train stations, waiting for women. She might be the kind of person who takes men like that and rips them limb from fucking limb with her bare hands.” The man left the station without a word, and the train took me home safe and sound.”
― Sara Gran, Come Closer

“Expect nothing. The simplicity of that directive, its bare bones, self-contained power was intoxicating. Expect nothing. It was so clean, so potent.
It was a phrase you'd associate with a person who didn't need anything from anyone; a closed system. An automaton. I wanted to be that person. I wanted to be that automaton.”
― Melissa Broder, Milk Fed

“Grief's only ever as deep as the love it's replaced.”
― Pat Barker, The Silence of the Girls