Patria Barthen

“The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“Sunflower poised against the sunset, crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye—
corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face, soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sunrays obliterated on its hairy head like a dried wire spiderweb,
leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures from the sawdust root, broke pieces of plaster fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear”
― Allen Ginsberg

“This diary is my kief, hashish and opium pipe. This is my drug and my vice.”
― Anais Nin

“You can’t let your guard down. If you can control yourself, you can control everyone else.”
― Megan Abbott, Queenpin