ivy ❦

“When someone says they don't want to be with you, you feel the pain of every single one of those times in life where you felt like you weren't good enough. You live through it all again... You have to be prepared to let go and let go and let go a thousand times.”
― Dolly Alderton, Good Material

“The reader and I thus mingled will constitute something living, that will not be me, because I will be dead, and will not be that person as they were before reading, because my story, added to their mind, will then become part of their thinking.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“Eight of the ten commandments are about what thou shalt not. But you can live a whole life not doing any of that stuff and still avoid doing any good. That’s the whole crisis. The rot at the root of everything. The belief that goodness is built on a constructed absence, not-doing. That belief corrupts everything, has everyone with any power sitting on their hands.”
― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!

“Am I a mother, Father? What name do you give to a woman with a dead child? I’m not a widow, not an orphan, what am I?
Better you don’t give me name Father, if you and your church ever find a name for me - you’ll probably just take away my right to decide how I behave or how I live my life, or how I die. Better not.”
― Claudia Piñeiro, Elena Knows