Amanda

“I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things.”
― George Gissing

“To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves--there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.”
― Joan Didion

“If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable - what then?”
― George Orwell, 1984

“It'll be when you first learn to walk that I get daily demonstrations of the asymmetry in our relationship. You'll be incessantly running off somewhere, and each time you walk into a door frame or scrape your knee, the pain feels like it's my own. It'll be like growing an errant limb, an extension of myself whose sensory nerves report pain just fine, but whose motor nerves don't convey my commands at all. It's so unfair: I'm going to give birth to an animated voodoo doll of myself. I didn't see this in the contract when I signed up. Was this part of the deal?”
― Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others