ash

“I often think that at the center of me is a voice that at last did split, a house in my heart so invaded with other people and their speech, friends I believed I was devoted to, people whose lives I can simply guess at now, that it gives me the impression I am simply a collection of them, that they all existed for themselves, but had inadvertently formed me, then vanished. But, what: Should I have been expected to create my own self, out of nothing, out of thin, thin air and alone?”
― Lorrie Moore, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?

“There are people in the world for whom "coming along" is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.”
― James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain