abby

“Any family could have lived in that room, filling the shelves with bought or borrowed books that eventually overflowed to the short glass coffee table. Porcelain ballerinas and clowns, cartoonish and threatening in their amplified emotions, must have been gifts from doting great-aunts. Three living succulents—I touched them, to check for falsity and perpetual longevity—were equally spaced in front of a thick copy of Elizabeth Bishop’s collected works. My family could not have lived in that room; I could not have lived in that room.”
― Marissa Higgins, A Good Happy Girl

“Who would believe this childish discipline, received at eight years old, from the hands of a woman of thirty, should influence my propensities, my desires, my passions, for the rest of my life, and that in quite a contrary sense from what might naturally have been expected?”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“when we have to do with vice and vicious characters, I maintain it is better to depict them as they really are than as they would wish to appear.”
― Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

“Not feeling pressure to smile is a universal relief.”
― Marissa Higgins, A Good Happy Girl