Bria

“But the city doesn’t grab anyone under the arms: on the contrary, it constantly seeks to fend off the unfortunate people who repair to it in search of a career, to destroy them and annihilate them.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Woodcutters: A Novel

“Beginnings are always ripe with possibilities, for they hold the promise of completion. Through love we imagine a new way of being. You see me as I’ve never seen myself. You airbrush my imperfections, and I like what you see. With you, and through you, I will become that which I long to be. I will become whole. Being chosen by the one you chose is one of the glories of falling in love. It generates a feeling of intense personal importance. I matter. You confirm my significance.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

“I was an obvious target. He chose me not because I was special, but because he was hungry and I was easy. Back at my apartment, while the man and I have sex, I leave myself in a way I haven’t in years. He and my body are in the bedroom as my mind wanders the apartment, curls up on the couch, and stares at the blank TV.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“The memoir is, at its core, an act of resurrection. Memoirists re-create the past, reconstruct dialogue. They summon meaning from events that have long been dormant. They braid the clays of memory and essay and fact and perception together, smash them into a ball, roll them flat. They manipulate time; resuscitate the dead. They put themselves, and others, into necessary context.”
― Carmen Maria Machado