Alma P

“I feel myself retreating to someplace deep inside. It is a pitiful kind of childhood, to know that no one loves you or is taking care of you, to always be on the outside looking in. I feel a decade older than my years. I know too much; I have seen people at their worst, at their most desperate and selfish, and this knowledge makes me wary. So I am learning to pretend, to smile and nod, to display empathy I do not feel. I am learning to pass, to look like everyone else, even though I feel broken inside.”
― Christina Baker Kline, Orphan Train

“Awake it was difficult to find anything in that chaotic clutter, but asleep she could...when the contours of reality were as faint as a tracery of pale ink.”
― Isabel Allende, Daughter of Fortune

“She entered the place of her dreams along a much traveled path and returned treading very carefully in order not to shatter the tenuous visions against the harsh light of consciousness.”
― Isabel Allende, Daughter of Fortune

“Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves”
― Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate