Cecilia

“Freedom isn't enough. What I desire doesn't have a name yet.”
― Clarice Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart

“I have become something wonderful, she thought. I have become something terrible. Was she now a goddess or a monster? Perhaps neither. Perhaps both.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“I wish to feel something much, much larger than I am, the supplicant's heart replies.
I wish to stand on the edge of ruination and defeat, to leap into a chasm full of danger.
I wish to feel my blood turn cold with fear and my cheeks burn bright with shame; I wish to feel joy that fills my lungs, and sadness that swells within me like a current. I wish to feel so much and so deeply that it washes over me in waves. I wish to drag myself toward something; I wish to lose pieces of myself along the way. I wish for hunger that drives me, for passion that fulfills me, for sensations of taking and having and losing and wanting, and I wish for all of it to come with a price, and a steep one —and then I wish for the courage to pay.”
― Olivie Blake, Masters of Death

“We must discuss, then, the relationship between women and water. When men fall into the sea, they drown. When women meet the water, they transform. It becomes vital to ask: is this a metamorphosis, or a homecoming?”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning