Tawnya

“what I really want to shout, and want in big letters on that grave, too, is FUCK YOU ALL. Don’t all women feel the same? The only difference is how much we know we feel it, how in touch we are with our fury. We’re all furies, except the ones who are too damned foolish,”
― Claire Messud, The Woman Upstairs

“It’s the strangest thing about being human: to know so much, to communicate so much, and yet always to fall so drastically short of clarity, to be, in the end, so isolate and inadequate. Even when people try to say things, they say them poorly, or obliquely, or they outright lie, sometimes because they’re lying to you, but as often because they’re lying to themselves.”
― Claire Messud, The Woman Upstairs

“Above all, in my anger, I was sad. Isn’t that always the way, that at the heart of the fire is a frozen kernel of sorrow that the fire is trying—valiantly, fruitlessly—to eradicate.”
― Claire Messud, The Woman Upstairs

“Life is about deciding what matters. It’s about the fantasy that determines the reality. Have you ever asked yourself whether you’d rather fly or be invisible?”
― Claire Messud, The Woman Upstairs