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

“I was going to remember, or discover, where everything came from. I was going to do the subtle, monstrous thing where you figured out what you were doing, and why.”
― 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

“It was a strange thing how people acted as if having a kid was the best thing that could happen to anyone, even though actual parents seemed to experience most of their children's actual childhoods as an annoyance, which they compensated for by bossing them around. People with kids had to go to work every day, at boring, reliable jobs. On the plus side, work was an acceptable way to escape your children, without seeming to want to. The children, having no such escape, lived through long stretches of boredom and powerlessness, punctuated by occasional treats that they overvalued and freaked out over because the rest of their lives were so empty.”
― Elif Batuman, Either/Or