Dora

“I could do it. I could rip your life out like a fury, like a beast.
I could stand over you with my red hands
and lap the heart out of your hollow chest.
I'm a wolf, I'm a woman, I'm a building hurricane.
I'm whole-way sharp teeth, soul-sick wet claws.
I say "love me," and you say, "you're killing me."
I say, "i'd die for you," and you say," You'd kill for me—that's not the same thing.”
― Elisabeth Hewer, Wishing for Birds

“At thirteen desperately watching TV, curling my long legs under me, desperately reading books, callow adolescent that I was, trying (desperately!) to find someone in books, in movies, in life, in history, to tell me it was O.K. to be ambitious, O.K. to be loud, O.K. to be Humphrey Bogart (smart and rudeness), O.K. to be James Bond (arrogance), O.K. to be Superman (power), O.K. to be Douglas Fairbanks (swashbuckling), to tell me self-love was all right, to tell me I could love God and Art and Myself better than anything on earth and still have orgasms.”
― Joanna Russ, The Female Man

“You should’ve seen the way he was looking at you while you were out.”
I smiled a little. “How?”
“Like you're the ocean and he's desperate to drown.”
― Michelle Hodkin, The Retribution of Mara Dyer

“Fear and guilt are sisters;”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House