Clara

“Indeed, the price one had to pay to remain true to the logic of History was terrible. One had to behold passively the death of thousands, take on one's conscience the torture of women and children transformed into human torches”
― Czesław Miłosz, The Captive Mind

“I can begin to see the compulsion for admitting original sin, for adoring Hitler, for taking opium. I have long wanted to read and explore the theories of philosophy, psychology, national, religious, & primitive consciousness, but it seems now too late for anything - I am a conglomerate garbage heap of loose ends - selfish, scared, contemplating devoting the rest of my life to a cause - going naked to send clothes to the needy, escaping to a convent, into hypochondria, into religious mysticism, into the waves - anywhere, anywhere, where the burden, the terrifying hellish weight of self-responsibility and ultimate self-judgment is lifted. I can see ahead only into dark, sordid alleys, where the dregs, the sludge, the filth of my life lies, unglorified, unchanged - transfigured by nothing: no nobility, not even the illusion of a dream.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“It was a problem in comic books: drawing an invisible man.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other's light.”
― James Baldwin, Nothing Personal