carol.

“To acquire a world of his own, the profane man has desacralized the world in which his ancestors lived; but to do so he has been obliged to adopt the opposite of an earlier type of behavior, and that behavior is still emotionally present to him, in one form or another, ready to be reactualized in his deepest being”
― Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion

“In grandiose moments, high on fresh air and freedom on the hill, I study my personal geology.

My body is a continent. Forces are at work in the night. A bruxist, I grind my teeth in my sleep, like tectonic plates. When I blink the sun flickers, my breath pushes the clouds across the sky and the waves roll into the shore in time with my beating heart. Lightning strikes every time I sneeze, and when I orgasm, there's an earthquake. The islands' headlands rise above the sea, like my limbs in the bathtub, my freckles are famous landmarks and my tears rivers. My lovers are tectonic plates and stone cathedrals.”
― Amy Liptrot, The Outrun

“The things we remember most clearly are always those that bring us shame.”
― Édouard Louis, Histoire de la violence

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