Phoenix

“I dream of an ideal confessor to tell everything to, spill it all: I dream of a blasé saint.”
― Emil Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

“While Greta gave Nicole her number, she watched Nicole notice Big Swiss. Watching women notice Big Swiss had become one of Greta’s favorite pastimes. Greta likened it to standing in line at a crowded bakery, focusing intensely on the pastries in the display case, feeling pressured to hurry up and decide because the line was so long, absentmindedly ordering from the faceless counterperson, meeting that person at the register, fumbling with your wallet, dealing with the debit card, and then realizing you’re being rung up by Charlize Theron, who’s making deliberate eye contact with you.”
― Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

“I fulfilled all the requirements for Clara Barcelo to send me packing, but I preferred to think that her blindness afforded me a margin for error and that my crime - my complete and pathetic devotion to a woman twice my age, my intelligence, and my height - would remain in the dark.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón

“The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the colored canvas, reveals himself.”
― Antonia Angress, Sirens & Muses