Angela

“It’s a special kind of privilege to be born into the body you wanted, to embrace the essence of your gender even as you recognize what you are up against. Even as you seek to redefine it.”
― Lena Dunham, Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"

“You know, I think the people I feel saddest for are the ones who once knew what profoundness was, but who lost or became numb to the sensation of wonder, who felt their emotions floating away and just didn't care. I guess that's what's scariest: not caring about the loss.”
― Douglas Coupland, Player One: What Is to Become of Us

“Don’t you see? We create our own thorns, and never stop to count the cost. All we can do is suffer the pain, and tell ourselves it was well worth it.’ ‘That’s what I don’t understand. The pain.’ He glanced down at her hand, so gently on his arm, hurting him so unbearably. ‘Why the pain, Meggie?’ ‘Ask God, Ralph,’ said Meggie. ‘He’s the authority on pain, isn’t He? He made us what we are, He made the whole world. Therefore He made the pain, too.”
― Colleen McCullough, The Thorn Birds

“There is a legend about a bird which sings only once in it's life, more beautifully than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves it's nest, it searches for a thorn tree, and does not rest until it has found one. Then, it impales it's breast on the longest, sharpest thorn. But as it is dying, it rises above it's own agony to outsing the Lark and the Nightingale. The Thornbird pays it's life for that one song, and the whole world stills to listen, and God in his heaven smiles, as it's best is brought only at the cost of great pain; Driven to the thorn with no knowledge of the dying to come. But when we press the thorn to our breast, we know, we understand.... and still, we do it." ~ Colleen McCullough”
― Colleen McCullough, The Thorn Birds