Ana

“If you feel exhausted by people, it’s because you’re willingly playing the martyr to make them like you. It’s your problem, not theirs.”
― Dolly Alderton, Everything I Know About Love

“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 didn't have to attract desire. Either it was in the woman who aroused it or it didn't exist. Either it was there at first glance or else it had never been.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Lover

“No one has ever asked you to make a floor-to-ceiling-sized friendship collage for their birthday. Or ring them three times a day. No one will cry if you don’t invite them to dinner because you don’t have enough chairs. If you feel exhausted by people, it’s because you’re willingly playing the martyr to make them like you. It’s your problem, not theirs.”
― Dolly Alderton, Everything I Know About Love