Emaline Wise

“I enjoyed playing this kind of character, the smiling girl who remembered things. Bobbi told me she thought I didn’t have a ‘real personality’, but she said she meant it as a compliment. Mostly I agreed with her assessment. At any time I felt I could do or say anything at all, and only afterwards think: oh, so that’s the kind of person I am.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“People were always wanting me to show some weakness so they could reassure me. It made them feel worthy.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“It pleased Culafroy that the nobility belonged to Ernestine rather than to himself, and in this trait we may already see a sign of his destiny. To be able to approach her, to enjoy her intimacy, her special favors, was agreeable to him, just as many persons are more pleased to be the favorite of a prince than the prince himself, or a priest of a god than the god, this way they can receive Grace.”
― Jean Genet, Our Lady of the Flowers

“People discriminated very carefully then between administering things and governing people. They did it so well that we forgot that the will to dominance is as central in human beings as the impulse to mutual aid is, and has to be trained in each individual, and each new generation.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia