Sophie

“When a female writer walks a female character in to the centre of her literary enquiry (or a forest) and this character starts to project shadow and light all over the place, she will have to find a language that is in part to do with learning how to become a subject rather than a delusion, and in part to do with unknotting the ways in which she has been put together by the societal system in the first place.”
― Deborah Levy, Things I Don't Want to Know: On Writing

“Quick now, give up this idle pondering!
And let’s be off into the great wide world!
I tell you: the fool who speculates on things
is like some animal on a dry heath,
led by an evil fiend in endless circles,
while fine green pastures lie on every side.”
― Yūko Tsushima, Territory of Light

“[...] Fear of breakdown is the fear of a breakdown that has already been experienced [...}

It’s only lately that I’ve realized that Winnicott is not suggesting that breakdowns do not recut. Now I see that he may be suggesting just the opposite: that a fear of breakdown in our past may be precisely what causes it to repeat in our future”
― Maggie Nelson, The Red Parts

“Why does the past do this? Why does it linger instead of receding? Why does it return with such a force sometimes that the real place in which one stands or sits or lies, the place in which one's corporeal body most undeniably exists, dissolves as if it were nothing more than a mirage? The past cannot be grasped; it is not possible to return in time, to regather what was lost or carelessly shrugged off, so why these sudden ambushes, these flourishes of memory?”
― Olivia Laing, To the River: A Journey Beneath the Surface