Ellen X.

“no way to effectively explain violations that are not overt. It is a rhetorical hellscape. A casual reduction so frequent it is mundane. Almost too mundane for the deployment of the R word, as with a certain sect of Good White Person the accusation overshadows the act. Racism! I should yell, because I’m sure Rebecca will receive it in the uppercase regardless, and already I feel her seizing on the drama of its implication, even though racism is often so mundane it leaves your head spinning, the hand of the ordinary in your slow, psychic death so sly and absurd you begin to distrust your own eyes. So it has taken a long time for me to get here. To say, Yes, this is what happened. It happened just like that.”
― Raven Leilani, Luster

“Maybe certain kinds of pain, at certain formative stages in life, just impress themselves into a person's sense of self permanently.”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

“This struggle between wanting a rooted, domestic existence and a life of nomadic liberty is a very human instinct, one that has been examined endlessly in the psyche of male stories and tormented male protagonists. Now, it’s our turn to wrestle with this quandary.”
― Dolly Alderton, Dear Dolly: Collected Wisdom

“I once had my heart broken – a proper sledgehammer job – and I went for a drink with a friend who is happily married in her forties with a child. My tears collected in a wine glass and I told her that I wanted to sleep until it was over. She held me by the shoulders and said: ‘One day you’ll look back on this and you will think, I was never more alive.’ I don’t want to romanticize your pain, but I now understand exactly what she meant. Grief is an electric shock that tells us we are fully alive – it means we’re connecting and creating and caring. We’re participating. We’re making the most of this short go. We’re opening up and taking risks, we’re tangling ourselves in other lives.”
― Dolly Alderton, Dear Dolly