Hannah

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I am a goblin, sure, but only because I am small, mischievous, and greedy for gold and jewelry.”
― Blythe Roberson, How to Date Men When You Hate Men

“We want to be seen. We want to matter. We want to belong. We want to be loved. We are built with these desires - desires so deep it is instinctual from the moment we are born. For me, middle school was awful. I was deeply insecure, and I was certain everyone was laughing at me. If I caught a glimpse of myself in the locker room mirror, I would cringe. I couldn't stand the way I looked. I hated my frizzy, curly hair and the gap between my front teeth. I hated my fair skin. I hated the way I felt inside my skin. I wanted to be someone else. Someone cool, someone prettier, someone happier, someone more loveable. I thought the answer was Reebok tennis shoes, but after this conversation I knew that wasn't the answer - I just hoped the answer wouldn't be impossible to find.”
― Lisa Leonard, Be You: 20 Ways to Embrace Who You Really Are

“I don’t know, I guess sometimes I feel happy or sad or worried…or maybe I get really into something on TV, or really like the flavor of some giant shrimp, whatever. But sometimes I have to wonder if those thoughts or feelings might be coming from the things I read for work. When I start to feel emotional about something, I can’t tell if I’m actually feeling that way. What if it’s just something somebody else wrote in a book? Or maybe a line or a performance from some movie…Either way, I get this feeling like I’m quoting somebody else’s work […] like the feelings aren’t mine.”
― Mieko Kawakami, All the Lovers in the Night