lee ⚢

“One thing I know about death is that it touches my psyche and mumbles in her magnificently unknown words; it floats within me and wanders through my bones every day.”
― Anne Sexton, Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters

“This November there seems to be nothing to say.”
― Anne Sexton, Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters

“One day my mother asked me what color my eyes were, The bank teller had just said something about a cat's green eyes, and my mother had immediately said that her eyes were green, too. A cat's eyes were green; her eyes were green; what color were my eyes? If they were green, too, then the teller might congratulate my mother on having guessed right. She had no idea that a normal person would find it insane for a mother to ask her only child what color her eyes were. But I sensed that she was also trying to see what it would be like to be that unattached to me. She was practicing, to see what it would be like to hurt me, a lot, to show how much she loved me. She had to be careful. If anyone found out that she loved me, we'd both be in trouble.
For a while I'd have to suffer, out in the open, the only girl without extra sneakers for gym class, but it was only because my mother's love was so much greater than all the other loves.
It was that much more dangerous, so she had to love me in secret, absolutely unobserved by anyone, especially me.”
― Sarah Manguso, Very Cold People

“The cinema implies a total inversion of values, a complete upheaval of optics, of perspective and logic. It is more exciting than phosphorus, more captivating than love.”
― Antonin Artaud