MSJ

“Egypt loves the lotus because it never dies. It is the same for people who are loved. Thus can something as insignificant as a name - two syllables, one high, one sweet - summon up the innumerable smiles and tears, sighs and dreams of a human life.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“Victoire Desgraves has always been good at surviving. They key, she has learned, is refusing to look back.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“You see, Millat did not love her. And she thought Millat didn't love her because he couldn't. She thought he was so damaged, he couldn't love anybody anymore. She wanted to find whoever had damaged him like this, damaged him so terribly; she wanted to find whoever had made him unable to love her.

It's a funny thing about the modern world. You hear girls in the toilets of clubs saying, 'Yeah, he fucked off and left me. He didn't love me. He just couldn't deal with love. He was too fucked up to know how to love me.' Now, how did that happen? What was it about this unlovable century that convinced us we were, despite everything, eminently lovable as a people, as a species? What made us think that anyone who fails to love us is damaged, lacking, malfunctioning in some way? And particularly if they replace us with a god, or a weeping madonna, or the face of Christ in a ciabatta roll - then we call them crazy. Deluded. Regressive. We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship.”
― Zadie Smith, White Teeth

“When we're mainly filtering our experience through the ego, constantly trying to improve or maintain our high self-esteem, we're denying ourselves the thing we actually want most. To be accepted as we are, an integral part of something much greater than our small selves. Unbounded. Immeasurable. Free.”
― Kristin Neff, Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself