Eleanor

“It was not that easy to convey to him, a man much older than she was, that the world was her world, too. He had taken a risk when he invited her to join him at his table. After all, she came with a whole life and libido of her own. It had not occurred to him that she might not consider herself to be the minor character and him the major character. In this sense, she had unsettled a boundary, collapsed a social hierarchy, broken with the usual rules.”
― Deborah Levy, The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography

“When happiness is happening it feels as if nothing else happened before it, it is a sensation that happens only in the present tense.”
― Deborah Levy, Things I Don't Want to Know

“After Duras wrote Lol Stein, she made a curious remark - she said that she gave herself permission to speak 'in a sense totally alien to women'. I know what she means. It is so hard to claim our desires and so much more relaxing to mock them.”
― Deborah Levy, The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography

“Pylades: I’ll take care of you.
Orestes: It’s rotten work.
Pylades: Not to me. Not if it’s you.”
― Anne Carson, Euripides