Sabrina

“Before sinkage, as they call it at the mortuary, a body must be washed, disinfected, drained, plugged and made-up. These chores were regularly done at home not so many years ago but they weren't chores then, they were acts of love.

What would you do? Pass the body into the hands of strangers? The body that has lain beside you in sickness and in health. The body your arms still long for dead or not. You were intimate with every muscle, privy to the eyelids moving in sleep. This is the body where your name is written, passing into the hands of strangers.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

“The physical memory blunders through the doors the mind has tried to seal. ... Wisdom says forget, the body howls.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

“While our bodies are solid and resist the slicing of the wind, let's not think of the deep mud or the patient ivy whose roots will find us out.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

“How does this end? Mika wondered. Not how she wanted it to. She thought of Caroline dressing Penny in clothes that matched her own. Of Hiromi forcing Mika to take dance lessons. How mothers see their daughters as echos, as do-overs, as younger versions of themselves who might have the life they didn't or have the same life as they did, but better. But children aren't second chances, Mika realized with a start. It was unfair for Hiromi to believe her desires should live inside Mika. Children are made to take a parent's love and pass it along.”
― Emiko Jean, Mika in Real Life