bita

“He is so lonely that he sometimes feels it physically, a sodden clump of dirty laundry pressing against his chest. He cannot unlearn the feeling. People make it sound so easy, as if the decision to want it is the most difficult part of the process. But he knows better: being in a relationship would mean exposing himself to someone...But what is he willing to do to feel less alone? Could he destroy everything he’s built and protected so diligently for intimacy? How much humiliation is he ready to endure? He doesn’t know; he is afraid of discovering the answer.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Sometimes he wonders whether this very idea of loneliness is something he would feel at all had he not been awakened to the fact that he should be feeling lonely, that there is something strange and unacceptable about the life he has. Always, there are people asking him if he misses what it had never occurred to him to want, never occurred to him he might have”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“And yes, the idea of wifeness, this toady disturbance in her mind, distracts her when she wants to get on with writing and thinking and reading. It leaves so little room for the rest of her.”
― Nell Stevens, Briefly, A Delicious Life

“No, I cannot escape death, but at least I can escape the fear of it – or do I have to die moaning and groaning too?”
― Epictetus, Discourses and Selected Writings