Aubrey

“There was something abstract and gentle about the experience of being ignored—a feeling of being spared, a known impossibility of anything happening—that was consonant with my understanding of love. In theory, of course, I knew that love could be reciprocated. It was a thing that happened, often, to other people. But I was unlike other people in so many ways.”
― Elif Batuman, Either/Or

“They say that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and I can only imagine the conversation between Eve and Skywoman: "Sister, you got the short end of the stick...”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

“Suddenly I couldn’t think what people were for, couldn’t think what their lives amounted to besides misery. Like a bird, I looked down from high treetops at all the wretched villages of men and felt only blank confusion. Those pitiful beasts, I would think if I were a bird, those poor, sad creatures dragging themselves along the ground, passing their days laboring and fearing and suffering until death. Too clever to live in peace, too stupid to live well. They’re better off in the dirt, finally quiet, finally peaceful.”
― Jacqueline Holland, The God of Endings

“I envy these people terribly, it’s true, but not for their children and families; I envy their brevity. I envy the low stakes of their choices. Whatever they lose, whatever they suffer, they don’t suffer long. They get just a little life. Birth, some joys, some sorrows, then death to wash it all clean.”
― Jacqueline Holland, The God of Endings