Maya

“Lightness, like anything inherited at great cost, was a lonely gift.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

“Loretta said that, a couple months ago, Cindy asked her what assassination meant. She told her the truth, of course—that an assassination is when someone kills you to make a point. Which was correct enough, Stella supposed, but only if you were an important man. Important men became martyrs, unimportant ones victims. The important men were given televised funerals, public days of mourning. Their deaths inspired the creation of art and the destruction of cities. But unimportant men were killed to make the point that they were unimportant—that they were not even men—and the world continued on.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

“Her death hit in waves. Not a flood, but water lapping steadily at her ankles. You could drown in two inches of water. Maybe grief was the same.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

“Sex was everywhere. And since I couldn’t have it, at least not in the way that I felt was expected of me at the time, I believed that no one would ever want to be with me, and no one would ever be able to love me. I felt broken and incomplete.”
― Lara Parker, Vagina Problems: Endometriosis, Painful Sex, and Other Taboo Topics