Heather

“Looking at those photographs, I remembered how my parents had never said “I love you” to each other. How they had said only “I miss you.” At the time, I hadn’t been able to figure out what this meant. But now it seemed clear: this was how they defined their love—by how deeply they missed each other when they were together. They felt the loss before it happened, and their love was defined by that loss. They hungered even as they ate, thirsted even as they drank. My mother once told me to live my life as if I were already dead. “Live each day as if you know it’s gonna be gone tomorrow,” she had said. That was how my parents loved each other, with a desperate, melancholy love, a fierce nostalgia for the present.”
― Danzy Senna, Caucasia

“I'm not the first or the last
to stand on a hillock,
watching the man she married
prove to the world
he's a total, utter, absolute, Grade A pillock.

- Mrs Icarus”
― Carol Ann Duffy, The World's Wife

“I recalled a theory my father had concocted one night, while we sat in an Oakland juke joint sharing a plate of ribs. He'd said humor, above all else, was what bound each of us and separated each of us from one another. Humor was the great moment of truth. What we thought was funny was how we defined ourselves, and revealed ourselves, whether we knew it or not.”
― Danzy Senna, Symptomatic

“We were lying on our backs in the foothills, watching the sky and making a list called "Never." All the things we would never do. Let's never get married. Let's never get fat. Let's never sleep with a married man. Let's never stop being students, even after we graduate. Let's never get dull-eyed and ironic. Let's never get stuck in a rut-- or trapped in a life we didn't choose. Let's never grow bitter.”
― Danzy Senna, Symptomatic