morri

“As she mader the long journey home to Champion Hill she felt what she had tried and failed to feel the day before: she looked at the city and was sick with love for it, sick with yearning to remain a part of it, to remain alive and young and unconfined and bursting with sensation. Her tired muscles began to ache, but even the ache was dear to her, even the blisters on her heels. She'd be a thing of aches and blisters for the rest of her days, she thought; she'd ask for nothing, trouble no one; if only they'd let her keep her freedom, if only they'd let her keep her life.”
― Sarah Waters, The Paying Guests

“She felt strange. For a moment it seemed to her that the day was already over--she was in bed, asleep, and then it was the next day and now here she was again. 'Oh,' she said.”
― Tao Lin, Bed

“There was a rumor that year, that you might not be yourself. That you might actually be someone else. One of those people who refuse antidepressants, who can't hold down a job, who ends up sleeping, finally, in a hole.
That might be you, was what the rumor said.
People talked. They said, 'There's this rumor...' Then they pointed out something amusing that was happening in the distance. They shrugged. Itched their forearms. They were easily distracted. Later on, though, in the mouthy dens of their bathrooms, they looked in their mirrors, and they just were not sure. Someone was there; but was it them? And so they believed. They said things like, 'What does it even matter. I might not even be myself.' Then they threw themselves off a bridge, or else drank a quart of ice coffee and watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.”
― Tao Lin, Bed

“She put an elbow on the table and leaned with her chin on her hand, the flesh of her arm looking rounded, solid, smooth. There were no angles to her at all, thought Frances with envy. She was all warm colour and curve. How well she filled her own skin! She might have been poured into it, like treacle.”
― Sarah Waters, The Paying Guests