Jessica

“This is not a barren place. Villanelle, whose talent is to look at everything at least twice, taught me to find joy in the most unlikely places and still to be surprised by the obvious. She had a knack of raising your spirits just by saying, 'Look at that,' and that was always an ordinary treasure brought to life. She can even charm the fishwives.

So I go from my room in the morning and make the journey to the garden very slowly, feeling the walls with my hands, getting a sense of surface, of texture. I breathe carefully, smelling the air, and when the sun is up I turn my face that way and let it lighten me.

. . .

At the garden, although I have a spade and a fork, I often dig with my hands if it’s not too cold. I like to feel the earth, to squeeze it hard and tight or to crumble it between my fingers.

There's time here to love slowly.”
― Jeanette Winterson, The Passion

“You know, you look very fine," Carol said. "You've come out all of the sudden. Is that what comes of getting away from me?"

"No," Therese said quickly. She frowned down at the tea she didn't want. Carol's phrase "come out" had made her think of being born, and it embarrassed her. Yes, she had been born since she left Carol. She had been born the instant she saw the picture in the library, and her stifled cry then was like the first yell of an infant, being dragged into the world against its will.”
― Patricia Highsmith, Carol

“If human beings, through most of our history, have moved back and forth fluidly between different social arrangements, assembling and dismantling hierarchies on a regular basis, maybe the real question should be ‘how did we get stuck?’ How did we end up in one single mode? How did we lose that political self-consciousness, once so typical of our species? How did we come to treat eminence and subservience not as temporary expedients, or even the pomp and circumstance of some kind of grand seasonal theatre, but as inescapable elements of the human condition? If we started out just playing games, at what point did we forget that we were playing?”
― David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

“Jealousy loomed so large in her it made her tremble. Maybe you, she thought. Maybe it's you I should be killing. Maybe then he will come to me and let me come to him. He is my home in this world. And then, aloud, "He is my home in this world."

"And I am his," said Ruth.

"And he wouldn't give a pile of swan shit for either one of you."

"They turned then and saw Pilate leaning on the window sill. Neither knew how long she'd been there.

"Can't say as I blame him neither. Two growed-up women talkin 'bout a man like he was a house or needed one. He ain't a house, he's a man, and whatever he need, don't none of you got it.”
― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon