Ana

“I had the face of pleasure, and yet I had no knowledge of pleasure. There was no mistaking that face.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Lover

“Very early in my life it was too late. It was already too late when I was eighteen. Between eighteen and twenty-five my face took off in a new direction. I grew old at eighteen. I don't know if it's the same for everyone, I've never asked. But I believe I've heard of the way time can suddenly accelerate on people when they're going through even the most youthful and highly esteemed stages of life. My ageing was very sudden. I saw it spread over my features one by one, changing the relationship between them, making the eyes larger, the expression sadder, the mouth more final, leaving great creases in the forehead. But instead of being dismayed I watched this process with the same sort of interest I might have taken in the reading of a book.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Lover

“You’re too hard on yourself,’she said. ‘You can do long-term love. You’ve done it better than anyone I know.’
‘How? My longest relationship was two years and that was over when I was twenty-four.’
‘I’m talking about you and me, ’she said”
― Dolly Alderton, Everything I Know about Love: A Memoir

“I don’t need to change my shape to make myself worthy of someone’s love. I don’t need any words or looks or comments from a man to believe I’m visible; to believe I am here. (...) Because I am enough. My heart is enough. The stories and sentences twisting around my mind are enough. My early morning walks and light night baths are enough. My singing in the shower, my double jointed toes and my loud laugh in the pub is enough. I am my own universe. I am the warm up act, the main event and the backing singers. And if this is it, if this is all there is - just me, the trees, the sky and the sea- I know now that that’s enough. I am whole. I am complete. I will never run out.”
― Dolly Alderton, Everything I Know About Love