Geena

“I expected my suffering to feel redemptive in some way. I thought life was meant to be meaningful, even when it was hard.
I wanted to tell her that I was unhappy, but that my unhappiness had no noble cause, and was nearly entirely of my own making. It was slow, insidious self-destruction”
― Bea Setton, Berlin

“When I was a child, I loved old men, and I could tell that they also loved me. They loved how eager I was to please them, how much I wanted them to think well of me. They would wink at me, and find me precocious. I would encounter them at church, and at family gatherings, and as friends of my friends' parents. They were the husbands of my dance instructors, or my science or history teachers.”
― Julia May Jonas, Vladimir

“souls are not re-cast with a change of decor”
― Bea Setton, Berlin

“I worried that I didn’t know how to play the glorious possibilities of the hand I’d been dealt. Someone else would make great use of this characterful nose, the desire to please, would know what to do with my kind family, great education, and my sympathetic nature. All these gifts had gone largely wasted on me. But it was complicated, this feeling I had, as the sparks melted into a confusion of light – because while I did envy other people for being them, I pitied them for never getting to be me.”
― Bea Setton, Berlin