Elizabeth

“The desire for love is universal but that has never meant it’s worthy of respect. It’s not admirable to want love, it just is.”
― Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers

“A funny thing about women and machines: the combination made made curious. They seemed to think it had something to do with them.”
― Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers

“But I had seen, the night I met her, that her beauty was going to leave her like it does all women. For the face, time relays some essential message, and time is the message. It takes things away. But its passage, its damages, are all we have. Without it, there's nothing.”
― Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers

“When I read a book, I try my best, not always successfully, to let the wall crumble just a bit, the barricade that separates me from the book. I try to be involved.
I am Raskalnikov. I am K. I am Humbert and Lolita.
I am you.
If you read these pages and think I'm the way I am because I lived through a civil war, you can't feel my pain. If you believe you're not like me because one woman, and only one, Hannah, chose to be my friend, then you're unable to empathize.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman