clara

“You're a mother, Ma. You're also a monster. But so am I - which is why I can't turn away from you. Which is why I have taken god's loneliest creature and put you inside it. Look.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Men are not gentle creatures who want to be loved, and who at the most can defend themselves if they are attacked; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness. As a result, their neighbor is for them not only a potential helper or sexual object, but also someone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work without compensation, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and to kill him. Homo homini lupus [man is wolf to man]. Who, in the face of all his experience of life and of history, will have the courage to dispute this assertion?”
― Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

“The excuses we make for them are outrageous, but they’re nothing compared with the ones we make for ourselves.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“It’s strange to know that whenever I remember myself at fifteen, I’ll think of this.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa