emma m.

“How can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God? There is no one, no entity or higher form that she can appeal to, or be reconciled with, or that can forgive her. There is nothing outside her. In her imagination she has set the limits and the terms. No atonement for God, or novelists, even if they are atheists. It was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. The attempt was all.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“I loved it, or at least I thought I ought to love it—I've never been very clear on that distinction.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, Homesick for Another World

“I felt I needed to hide a little. My mind needed a smaller world to roam.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, Death in Her Hands

“I was pretending that I did not speak their language; on the moon we spoke a soft, liquid tongue, and sang in the starlight, looking down on the dead dried world.”
― Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle