Aysu

“How often in life he has found himself a frustrated observer of apparently impenetrable systems, watching other people participate effortlessly in structures he can find no way to enter or even understand. So often that it’s practically baseline, just normal existence for him. And this is not only due to the irrational nature of other people, and the consequent irrationality of the rules and processes they devise; it’s due to Ivan himself, his fundamental unsuitedness to life. He knows this. He feels himself to have been formed, somehow, with something other than life in mind.”
― Sally Rooney, Intermezzo

“You can drive yourself crazy thinking about different things you could have done in the past.”
― Sally Rooney, Intermezzo

“Yet the longing to be understood by a man down to the deepest, most secret recesses of one's soul, to be recognized by him as a striving human being, repeatedly decided matters. And repeatedly disappointment ensued all too swiftly, since the friend saw in me only the feminine element which he tried to mold into a willing sounding board to his own ego. So repeatedly the moment inevitably arrived in which I had to shake off the chains of community with an aching heart but with a sovereign, uninfluenced will. Then I was again alone.”
― Alexandra Kollontai, The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman

“Vi däremot vet, att det inte är kulturen och kunskapen som befriar och frigör kvinnan, utan det ekonomiska systemet, i vilket kvinnan får ägna sig åt nyttigt och produktivt arbete för hela samhället. Kommunismen är just ett sådant ekonomiskt system.”
― aleksandra kollontai, Kvinnans ställning i den ekonomiska samhällsutvecklingen