Monica

“I have served a genius for almost forty years. Hundreds of times I have felt my intellectual energy stir within me and all sorts of desires - a longing for education, a love of music and the arts… And time and again I have crushed and smothered these longings… Everyone asks, “But why should a worthless woman like you need an intellectual or artistic life?” To this question I can only reply: “I don’t know, but eternally suppressing it to serve a genius is a great misfortune".”
― Sophia Tolstoy

“These people knew what whiskeys were good, what wine was the thing with this food, that food, what places to go, how to dance, how to smoke, how much stress to put on love, how to dress, when to curse, and did not indulge, for the most part, in homosexuality, but could discuss it without eagerness, distate, curiosity, without anything but ennui.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, Maud Martha

“What did I do? I read books and studied. I listened to my parents and did what they asked me to. Even though, in the end, I never made them happy. I didn’t like myself, and something told me I’d end up alone.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

“A great writer always, mostly, needs to do something that has nothing to do with writing, or so it seems, but that thing they are involved with is the very place in which they write; while farming, a poet is writing. Writers go to parties, great writers do something else.”
― Jamaica Kincaid, Putting Myself Together: Writing 1974–