Grace Kao

“I have a lot of work to do today;
I need to slaughter memory,
Turn my living soul to stone
Then teach myself to live again.”
― Anna Akhmatova, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

“Men, dazed by pleasure, absent-mindedly sow their seed. Overcome by their orgasm, they fertilize us. They show up inside us and withdraw, leaving, concealed in our flesh, their ghost, like a lost object.”
― Elena Ferrante, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

“Dumb hope is what it hurts most to write, occupying the foolish schemes we pursued for decades, the blind alleys, the cliffs we stepped off.”
― Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir

“...I am talking about evil.

It blooms.
It eats.
It grins.”
― Anne Carson, Glass, Irony and God