Claire

“At times I think of human relationships as something soft like sand or water, and by pouring them into particular vessels we give them shape.”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

“I tell myself that I want to live a happy life, and that the circumstances for happiness just haven't arisen. But what if that's not true? What if I'm the one who can't let myself be happy? Because I'm scared, or I prefer to wallow in self-pity, or I don't believe I deserve good things, or some other reason. Whenever something good happens to me I always find myself thinking: I wonder how long it will be until this turns out badly. And I almost want the worst to happen sooner, sooner rather than later, and if possibile straight away, so at least I don't have to feel anxious about it anymore.”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

“Today’s narcissistic “achievement-subject” seeks out success above all. Finding success validates the One through the Other. Thereby, the Other is robbed of otherness and degrades into a mirror of the One—a mirror affirming the latter’s image.”
― Byung-Chul Han, The Agony of Eros

“So, you see, translators do not so much deliver a message as the rewrite the original. And herein lies the difficulty - rewriting is still writing, and writing always reflects the authors ideology and biases.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel