Mary Ann

“I knew exactly what Donika meant, but I had no words to name it. My knowing was from a time before I knew such experience was speakable. Our sex does not feel like an exchange of power, but like a natural event that can only occur when both of us stop thinking of ourselves and trust our bodies completely. No one plays the boy, because no one plays anything. It can't happen unless we trust that we'll be loved at our most animal.

Intimacy, I've found, has little to do with romance. Maybe it is the opposite of romance which is based on a story written by someone else. It is a closeness to another person that requires closeness with oneself. It is not watching lightning strike from the window but being struck by it.”
― Melissa Febos, Girlhood

“One way to introduce market forces was for private companies to buy NHS hospitals, particularly underperforming ones. Dalton, the British health official who was the focus of intense McKinsey politicking, met with McKinsey consultants on December 17, 2010 to sort through their options. They had a prospective buyer in mind - Helios - a private German hospital chain. Internal records showed that the parent company of Helios had been a McKinsey client in recent years.

By the time lawmakers and bureaucrats began to consider the new NHS law, consultants were deeply embedded in Britain’s government. In 2010 the NHS alone spent £313 million on management consultants.”
― Walt Bogdanich, When McKinsey Comes to Town

“No doubt, my internalization of our victim-blaming culture is largely to blame for this silence. Of course the man outside my window hadn't seen me masturbating, but while we have no familiar narrative for why men do such things, we all know the ways women invite their victimization by walking after dark, wearing short skirts, or having big breasts. The pathology of victimhood would also claim that self-blaming and shame were my very ordinary attempt to explain what had happened to me, to assert control over it by assuming responsibility.”
― Melissa Febos, Girlhood

“What are the features of conspiracy theories that distinguish them from scientific theories? One, the conspiratorial theory is often vague about the motives of the behind-the-scenes leaders or assigns them implausible motivations. Two, it assumes that they are extremely clever and knowledgeable. Three, it places power in the hands of one strong leader or a tiny cabal. And, finally, it assumes that illegal plans can be kept secret for indefinitely long periods of time. A scientific theory, like the class-domination one, is very different.”
― Peter Turchin, End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration