The Book Maven

“With age comes self-awareness, or something that looks like self-awareness, and so I try to be on the lookout for patterns of behavior, choices I’m making where I’m trying too hard, giving too much, reaching too intently for being right when right is what someone else wants me to be. It’s scary, though, trying to be yourself and hoping yourself is enough. It’s scary believing that you, as you are, could never be enough.”
― Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

“I had (and have?) this void, this cavern of loneliness inside me that I have spent my whole life trying to fill. I was willing to do most anything if that boy would ease my loneliness, I wanted to feel like he and I belonged to each other, but each time we were together and then after, I felt quite the opposite. And still, I was drawn to him.”
― Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

“And it’s a shame that the measure is what is not so bad [in relationships and partners] instead of what is thriving and good […] I have had good relationships, but it’s hard to trust that because what I consider good doesn’t always feel very good at all.”
― Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

“It is not difficult to stand above the conventions when we leave no hostages among them; men can always be more unconventional than women, and a bachelor of independent means need encounter no difficulties at all.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End