Ada

“What a fool she must have been ever to have had anything to do with the man!”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“I was free with every road as my home. No limitations and no commitments. But then summer passed and winter came and I fell short for safety. I fell for its spell, slowly humming me to sleep, because I was tired and small, too weak to take or handle those opinions and views, attacking me from every angle. Against my art, against my self, against my very way of living. I collected my thoughts, my few possessions and built isolated walls around my values and character. I protected my own definition of beauty and success like a treasure at the bottom of the sea, for no one saw what I saw, or felt the same as I did, and so I wanted to keep to myself.
You hide to protect yourself.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“To ask for an explanation is to explain the obscure by the more obscure.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty

“When a strong woman recklessly throws away her strength she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd