Ebony

“He steps back, still looking. In the painting, Willem's torso is directed toward the viewer, but his face is turned to the right so that he is almost in profile, and he is leaning towards something or someone and smiling. And because he knows Willem's smiles, he knows that Willem has been captured looking at something he loves, he knows Willem in that instant is happy. Willem's face and neck dominate the canvas and although the background is suggested rather than shown, he knows that Willem is at their table. He knows it from the way that JB has drawn the light and shadows on Willem's face. He has the sense that if he says Willem's name that the face in the painting will turn toward him and answer; he has the sense that if he stretches his hand out and strokes the canvas he will feel beneath his fingertips Willem's hair, his fringe of eyelashes.
But he doesn't do this, of course, just looks up at last and sees JB smiling at him, sadly. "The title card's been mounted already," JB says, and he goes slowly to the wall behind the painting and sees its title - "Willem Listening to Jude Tell a Story, Greene Street"-and he feels his beneath abandon him; it feels as if his heart is made of something oozing and cold, like ground meat, and it is being squeezed inside a fist so that chunks of it are falling, plopping to the ground near his feet.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“But your own tears blind you to mine.
I am not neglectful of friendship,
but we two squat in the same coracle,
we are both swamped by the same stormy waters,
I have not the gifts of a happy man. . . Often enough.”
― Catullus, I Hate and I Love

“I think the therapists around this place think that if you know yourself, then somehow you’ll be better and healthier and you’ll be able to leave this place and live out your days as a happy and loving human being. Happy. Loving. I hate those words. I’m supposed to like them. I’m supposed to want them. I don’t. Don’t like them, don’t want them. This is the way I see it: if you get to know yourself really well, you might discover that deep down inside you’re just a dirty, disgusting, and selfish piece of shit. What if my heart is all rotted out and corrupted? What about that? What am I supposed to do with that information? Just tell me that. Most of the time I get the feeling that I’m just an animal disguised as an eighteen-year-old guy. At least I’m hoping that maybe deep down inside I’m a coyote.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“I don't give a shit what the world thinks. I was born a bitch, I was born a painter, I was born fucked. But I was happy in my way. You did not understand what I am. I am love. I am pleasure, I am essence, I am an idiot, I am an alcoholic, I am tenacious. I am; simply I am ... You are a shit.”
― Frida Kahlo