Julia

“I say almost nothing, almost all the time. Obviously, I recognize, in a grander sense, that I have a tendency to alienate myself and blow things out of proportion, and that these women are basically guiltless from a certain perspective.”
― Halle Butler, The New Me

“I survived because I remained soft, because I listened, because I wrote. Because I huddled close to my truth, protected it like a tiny flame in a terrible storm. Hold up your head when the tears come, when you are mocked, insulted, questioned, threatened, when they tell you you are nothing, when your body is reduced to openings. The journey will be longer than you imagined, trauma will find you again and again. Do not become the ones who hurt you. Stay tender with your power. Never fight to injure, fight to uplift. Fight because you know that in this life, you deserve safety, joy, and freedom. Fight because it is your life. Not anyone else’s. I did it, I am here. Looking back, all the ones who doubted or hurt or nearly conquered me faded away, and I am the only one standing. So now, the time has come. I dust myself off, and go on.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name: A Memoir

“People tell journalists their stories as characters and dreams deliver their elliptical messages: without warning, without context, without concern for how odd they will sound when the dreamer awakens and repeats them.”
― Janet Malcolm, The Journalist and the Murderer

“But inside the self performing as someone who was fine was the self who was not, and the vision I'd had of my life, the one that had me wanting to scream, was a vision of how living this way, inside of this performance, had blighted my life. I felt like a tree struck by lightning a long time ago, burning secretly from the inside out, the bark still smooth to the end -- the word FINE painted on it.”
― Alexander Chee, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel