Xenia Girdler

“After a certain age, we put on a mask of confidence and certainty. In time, that mask gets stuck to our face and we can’t remove it.”
― Paulo Coelho, Adultery

“The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Even if the writer himself was a good person, and even if his book really was insightful, all books were ultimately marketed as status symbols, and all writers participated to some degree in this marketing.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“It surprised Anna and it upset Anna how small her life was each time she tried to tell it, to shape it in order to escape it, how it always came out too quickly as a few dispiriting sentences so easily dismissed.”
― Richard Flanagan, The Living Sea of Waking Dreams