carol.

“She has no name for that feeling of utter abandonment, nor the feeling that comes over her on fair days, when she stands in the courtyard from the photo, and the voice of the loudspeaker booms front behind the trees, and the music and commercials run together in an unintelligible blur. It is as if she were standing outside the fete, separated from some earlier thing.”
― Annie Ernaux, Les Années

“There is a will that exists, a desperate, continual, constantly renewed effort to place some people on a level below you, not to be on the lowest rung of the social ladder.”
― Édouard Louis, The End of Eddy

“Some day this pain will be useful to you.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“Maybe what she meant was that obviously she wasn't a lady because there was no way she could be. To be ordinary, as if pride were not the first manifestations of shame.”
― Édouard Louis, The End of Eddy