gwen

“The astral discontent with actual lives, actual men, the denial of the real generative possibilities of adult sexual life, somehow touches beyond words. “It is the right of the oppressed to organize around their oppression as they see and define it,” the movement theorists insist doggedly in an effort to solve the question of these women, to convince themselves that what is going on is still a political process, but the handwriting is already on the wall. These are converts who want not a revolution but “romance,” who believe not in the oppression of women but in their own chances for a new life in exactly the mold of their old life. In certain ways they tell us sadder things about what the culture has done to them than the theorists ever did, and they also tell us, I suspect, that the movement is no longer a cause but a symptom.”
― Joan Didion, The White Album: Essays

“that when you say ‘I do,’ what you are doing is not, as you thought, vowing your eternal love, but rather subscribing to a whole system of rights, obligations and responsibilities that may well be anathema to your most cherished beliefs.”
― Joan Didion, The White Album: Essays

“From mid-October, fine, sunny days set in. A few cold nights had caused the trees to turn red and yellow, and in the second week of the month Wojnicz suddenly awoke to an entirely altered setting—now he was surrounded by every possible shade of yellow, orange and red, still interwoven here and there with retreating green. The frenzy of colors, highlighted by the blue chill of the sky, was intoxicating, and Wojnicz even felt like asking Thilo for some paints so that he could document this astonishing transformation. Colored leaves were falling onto the cobbled streets, as though some force were trying to carpet the hard surface in a mosaic pattern. How much the world had softened, how much it had mellowed! Masses of swallowtail butterflies as big as sparrows, suddenly awakened by the sunlight, were bouncing off the windowpanes as they sought shelter from the approaching cold, only to die helplessly on the sills.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story

“The idea that there is sanity in insanity, that truth lies on the far side of madness, informs not only a considerable spread of Western literature but also, so commonly is it now held, an entire generation’s experiment with hallucinogens.”
― Joan Didion, The White Album: Essays