Olene Ebanks

“For years I’d been awaiting that overriding urge I’d always heard about, the narcotic pining that draws childless women ineluctably to strangers’ strollers in parks. I wanted to be drowned by the hormonal imperative, to wake one day and throw my arms around your neck, reach down for you, and pray that while that black flower bloomed behind my eyes you had just left me with child. (With child: There’s a lovely warm sound to that expression, an archaic but tender acknowledgement that for nine months you have company wherever you go. Pregnant, by contrast, is heavy and bulging and always sounds to my ear like bad news: “I’m pregnant.” I instinctively picture a sixteen-year-old at the dinner table- pale, unwell, with a scoundrel of a boyfriend- forcing herself to blurt out her mother’s deepest fear.) (27)”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“And that's why people no longer care which words they use as long as they use lots of them.”
― Norton Juster

“When it came to growing viruses—as with many other things—the fact that HeLa was malignant just made it more useful.”
― Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

“My heart to yours sends but one cry:
If kisses fast could flee
By letter, then with your sweet lips
My letters read should be!”
― Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac