Toxin

“How strange to feel something so close to mercy, whatever that was, and stranger still that it should be found in here of all places, at the end of a road of ruined houses by a toxic river. That among a pile of salvaged trash, he would come closest to all he ever wanted to be: a consciousness sitting under a lightbulb reading his days away, warm and alone, alone and yet, somehow, still somebody's son.”
― Ocean Vuong, The Emperor of Gladness

“It is a better pain. A more familiar one. One I control. In this place I know who I am, and all my suffering is mastered.”
― Kat Dunn, Hungerstone

“I am not made for this, but Cora is. She skips lightly from stone to stone, vivacious and bright and so unencumbered. Jealousy is not an emotion I have easily tolerated in myself before, but it spills out now, raw and vicious, a blade turned against my own heart. I am jealous of Cora's passion and carelessness, but most of all I am jealous that she can experience all these things at an age when I held myself under such rigid control, when I was a creature made only from fear and survival. I am jealous that anybody has the gift of growing up differently.”
― Kat Dunn, Hungerstone

“I am a drowning woman clinging to a wreckage, but I will sing so loud as I go down.”
― Kat Dunn, Hungerstone