Gina

“It’s hard to explain how much that feeling of the bottom potentially falling out at any moment takes its toll. It makes you anxious, of course, and constant anxiety is impossible for the body to handle. So you develop a coping mechanism, and for us that meant shutting down. Everything we liked or wanted or felt joy in had to be hidden or suppressed. I’m sad to say that this method works. If you don’t give as much credence or value to whatever it is that you love, it hurts less when it is inevitably taken from you. I had to pretend I had no joy. It will come as a shock to people who know me now, but being able to express joy was something it took me a long time to be confident enough to do.”
― Alan Cumming, Not My Father's Son

“It is thanks to my evening reading alone that I am still more or less sane.”
― W.G. Sebald, Vertigo

“If you go home with somebody, and they don't have books, don't fuck 'em!”
― John Waters

“Allow me, in conclusion, to congratulate you warmly upon your sexual intercourse, as well as your singing.”
― Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie