Apphia Barton

“There is the buried language and there is the individual vocabulary, and the process of poetry is one of excavation and of self-discovery. Tonally the individual voice is a dialect; it shapes its own accent, its own vocabulary and melody in defiance of an imperial concept of language, the language of Ozymandias, libraries and dictionaries, law courts and critics, and churches, universities, political dogma, the diction of institutions. Poetry is an island that breaks away from the main.”
― Derek Walcott, The Antilles

“It's your body, you can treat it however you please. The only area where you're free to do just as you like.”
― Han Kang, The Vegetarian

“I don’t mean that my mother didn’t love me but she was not a domestic person: her life was in her mind. The fundamental skill of all mothers—the management”
― Zadie Smith, Swing Time

“The fundamental skill of all mothers—the management of time—was beyond her. She measured time in pages.”
― Zadie Smith, Swing Time