Laura Neale

“If medical practitioners wanted to save lives,” said Baxter, “instead of making money out of them, they would unite to prevent diseases, not work separately to cure them. The cause of most illness has been known since at least the sixth century before Christ, when the Greeks made a goddess of Hygiene. Sunlight, cleanliness and exercise, McCandless! Fresh air, pure water, a good diet and clean roomy houses for everyone, and a total government ban on all work which poisons and prevents these things.” “Impossible, Baxter. Britain has become the industrial workshop of the world. If social legislation arrests the profits of British industry our worldwide market will be collared by Germany and America and thousands would starve to death. Nearly a third of Britain’s food is imported from abroad.” “Exactly! So until we lose our worldwide market British medicine will be employed to keep a charitable mask on the face of a heartless plutocracy.”
― Alasdair Gray, Poor Things

“It was as if, at such times, he was permanently suspended in the blissful but always vanishing space between desire and satisfaction. In that region of the self that one is no longer anguished by the absence of something one feels to be necessary for one's salvation but not yet saddened by the disappointment that attainment of desire always seemed to bring. For strong desire, desire that radiates outward through all the regions of the body, always seemed to involve the hope or belief that attainment of the object of desire whether a person, place, or situation will change everything completely, will end all absence and yearning, all effort and struggle. That it will stem somehow the slow sad passage of time.”
― Anuk Arudpragasam, A Passage North

“Imposter syndrome is a psychological pattern in which individuals doubt themselves and have a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud. Last year my friend Ingrid told me I had it. I had just told her that I didn’t feel like I belonged at my previous bookstore job. I told her that I didn’t really get 1984 and that I hate poetry — so I wasn’t sure if working at a bookstore was right for me. She told me, ‘You have a classic case of impostor syndrome.’

I told her that I’m not sure that’s a real syndrome. I said I wonder if everyone’s an impostor. What if beneath every lawyer’s suit and every stay-at-home-parent’s apron, everyone is just a baby who doesn’t know what they’re doing?”
― Emily R. Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“Some things can be forgiven, but sometimes an action is so painful the memory of it can still crush a person ten years down the road.”
― Colleen Hoover, Reminders of Him