carmen

“She grows up feeling wrong, out of place, too dark, too tall, too unruly, too opinionated, too silent, too strange. She grows up with the awareness that she is merely tolerated, an irritant, useless, that she does not deserve love, that she will need to change herself substantially, crush herself down if she is to be married.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, Hamnet

“Brooklyn was a dream. All the things that happened there just couldn't happen. It was all dream stuff. Or was it all real and true and was it that she, Francie, was the dreamer?”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“La llanura es bella y terrible a la vez; en ella caben, holgadamente, hermosa vida y muerte atroz. Ésta acecha por todas partes; pero allí nadie la teme. El llano asusta; pero el miedo del llano no enfría el corazón: es caliente como el gran viento de su soleada inmensidad, como fiebre de sus esteros. El llano enloquece y la locura del hombre de la tierra ancha y libre es ser llanero siempre.”
― Rómulo Gallegos, Doña Bárbara

“We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything - what a waste!”
― Andre Aciman, Call Me by Your Name