Talia

“How the alternative reduces one's prospect and petrifies the imagination in a way that the possibility can never do. Possibilities, innumerable and tightly packed, could shower forth like mushroom spore between such alternatives as being here, or there; alive, or dead; and old, or young.”
― Elizabeth Jane Howard, The Long View

“That is the thing with giving your heart. You never wait for someone to ask. You hold it out and hope they want it”
― Suzanne Collins, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

“I am to gratify his pleasure and nurse his child, I am a piece of household furniture, I am a woman.”
― Sofia Tolstoy, The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy: A Chronicle of Marriage to Leo Tolstoy and Turbulent Turn-of-the-Century Russia

“Intense grief, like intense love, is something you can never suppress, however hard you try. There are days when I feel as though I cannot make my life stretch far enough. Life is like a piece of cloth which has to be stretched over something. Sometimes it's too big, and there's a surplus; sometimes, there's exactly the right amount you need to be happy, and sometimes there just isn't enough, and when you stretch it, it tears.”
― Sofia Tolstoy, The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy: A Chronicle of Marriage to Leo Tolstoy and Turbulent Turn-of-the-Century Russia