Lucy Du

“What if you colonize your own mind and when you get inside, the furniture is attached to the ceiling? What if you step inside and when you touch the furniture, you realize it's all just cardboard cutouts and it all collapses beneath the pressure of your finger? What if you get inside and there's no furniture? What if you get inside and it's just you in there, sitting in a chair, rolling figs and eggs around in the basked of your lap and humming a little tune? What if you get inside and there's nothing there, and then the door hatch closes and locks?

What is worse: being locked outside of your own mind, or being locked inside of it?”
― Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties

“I took a step toward her. "It is my right to reside in my own mind. It is my right," I said. "It is my right to be unsociable and it is my right to be unpleasant to be around. Do you ever listen to yourself? This is crazy, that is crazy, everything is crazy to you. By whose measure? Well, it is my right to be crazy, as you love to say so much. I have no shame. I have felt many things in my life, but shame is not among them." The volume of my voice caused me to stand on my tiptoes. I could not remember yelling like this, ever. "You may think that I have an obligation to you but I assure you that us being thrown together in this arbitrary arrangement does not cohesion make. I have never had less of an obligation to anyone in my life, you aggressively ordinary woman.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties

“What if I was zero percent happy, and I walked through the door to find that a hundred percent happy still isn't all that happy? What then?”
― Raphael Bob-Waksberg, Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory

“I feel so good,' they all said. Whenever I talked to them, that was what always came out of their mouths, or really, it was a mouth, a single mouth that once ate and now just says, 'I feel really, really good.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties