Hailey Skinner

“Hindsight is a dish best served earlier, but it never is. It is inevitably served after the bill has been paid, when you are fucked and full and powerless and bloated and stumbling.”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot

“From then on, every time I felt the shock of beauty I felt torn between the enthusiasm that drew me to it and the impotence that nailed my feed to the ground.”
― Françoise Hardy, The Despair of Monkeys and Other Trifles: A Memoir by Françoise Hardy

“You don't let go once. That's your first mistake. You say goodbye over a lifetime. You might not have thought about her for ten years, then you'll hear a song or you'll walk past somewhere you once went together - something will come to the surface that you'd totally forgotten about. And you say another goodbye. You have to be prepared to let go and let go and let go a thousand times.”
― Dolly Alderton, Good Material

“I have never returned to this lost paradise. Sometimes I am struck with the sudden desire to go to the Gare de l'Est, board the Orient Express, and retrace the route between Innsbruck and Plumeshof. As I so often saw other more or less close friends of the Welser family do, I fantasize about showing up without warning in the pretty meadow surrounded by fir trees and making the climb to the house while thinking only of Aunt Heidi, who has long since gone the to join her two older sons and their father in heaven. I would concentrate on her so strongly that I would eventually see her again on the doorstep, hastily drying her flour-covered hands in her apron; her opal eyes would brighten when she saw me. She would spread her arms while joyfully shouting: "Franziska!" and I would run to her calling back, "Aunt Heidi, Aunt Heidi!" Kurt's contagious laughter would echo in the distance. Lilo, smiling, would be hanging out the laundry. A lifetime of love would still be stretching out before them. A delicious aroma of pancakes would be drifting in the air ... The large earthenware oven, the eiderdown quilts, the painted wooden chairs with a little heart carved in them like the shutters ... nothing would have changed.”
― Françoise Hardy, The Despair of Monkeys and Other Trifles: A Memoir by Françoise Hardy