Vanessa

“Why?" asked her companion. "Why do you love him when you ought not to?"
Edna, with a motion or two, dragged herself on her knees before Mademoiselle Reisz, who took the glowing face between her two hands.
"Why? Because his hair is brown and grows away from his temples; because he opens and shuts his eyes, and his nose is a little out of drawing; because he has two lips and a square chin, and a little finger which he can't straighten from having played baseball too energetically in his youth. Because - "
"Because you do, in short," laughed Mademoiselle.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“The western mind makes definitions; it draws lines.”
― Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson

“I may have had moments of regret in my life, but you know, they wouldn't add up to an hour.”
― Emma Donoghue, Slammerkin

“When it over, I want to say:all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular,and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

from "When the death comes”
― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Volume One