Tea

“A Virgin Cure? It's a lie of the most terrible and monstrous sort." pg. 121
"In 1871, under common law, the age of consent was 10 years of age. (In Delaware it was seven.) The young girls of New York understood (for better or for worse) the value of declaring themselves to be a palatable age to gentlemen. Twelve sounded fr too young to the ears of any man with a conscience or heart. Sixteen, even when uttered by honest lip, inevitably brought the girl's purity into question. Of the years left between, fifteen was declared to be the ideal number." pg 124”
― Ami McKay, The Virgin Cure

“Yet I am still somewhat hampered. I cannot free myself from that strong, commanding voice which speaks to me, or from that mysterious power which pushes aside objects, contemptuous of their size; I am still wearied by endless monotonous roads that led nowhere. That is why I am not a perfect spirit, only an 'insane person', someone who arouses in normal people pity, contempt or fear. But I do not complain. Even like this, I am better off than those of healthy mind.”
― Stefan Grabiński, The Dark Domain

“Artists are nothing but expert time killers, filling up the hours by entertaining themselves. But the ones who think they're changing the universe are truly delusional. Writers who believe communication makes a difference are the most delusional of all. Every day people find better, faster ways to communicate and guess what? The same percentage of humanity remains ignorant and hateful. We still torture and murder for profit. We still rape and steal, and we step gingerly over people who are starving to death so we won't get any of their shit on our shoes on our way to the espresso stand.”
― S.P. Miskowski, I Wish I Was Like You

“Childhood is bound like the Gordian knot with my memories of the Black Sea, and I still feel its waters welling up within me today. Sometimes these waters are leaden, as grey as the military ships that sail on their curved expanses, and sometimes they are blue as pigmented cobalt. Then would come dusk, when I would sit and watch the seabirds waver to shore, flitting from open waters to the quiet empty vastlands in darkening spaces behind me, the same birds Ovid once saw during his exile, perhaps; and the same waters the Argonauts crossed searching for the fleece of renewal.

And out in the distance, invisible, the towering heights of Caucasus, where once-bright memories of the fire-thief have transmuted into something weird and many-faceted, and beyond these, pitch-black Karabakh in dolorous Armenia.”
― Paul Christensen, The Heretic Emperor