Kate Esther

“The priest who once supervised me as a student had once said to me that a person only has to step sideways for everything to look different. He'd been talking about the priest's role as a director of souls. I don't know why I remembered it so vividly, because he said all sorts of clever things, but I reasoned it was because it was true, and because it was something I needed to know and thus found significant. People disappeared into their own lives and conflicts, and in doing so they lost perspective, not only on where they were, but also on who they were, and who they had been or could become.
But stepping sideways in one's own life was well nigh impossible.”
― Karl Ove Knausgaard, The Morning Star

“To be a natural presence, you shouldn't take up too much space, which I always found easy at the beginning of a friendship. It felt nice to reshape myself into precisely the right format until the moment came, usually once I'd shrunk to my minimum size, when I got moody. I always have to be careful what I say around you, my friends would say. Or if I suddenly lost my temper over something that hadn't previously angered me, they'd say, I don't have enough space for this. Then I would know that my presence was no longer a given and it was all my fault -- it wasn't fair to pretend I was something other than who I really was, to keep shapeshifting like some kind of Barbapapa. I'm either too much or too little. I'm terrible at dispensing the right dose of myself.”
― Jente Posthuma, Waar ik liever niet aan denk

“say you get caught inside one fixed idea of things, and you’re always clinging to it or whatever… that shit puts a block inside you. So now the river’s gotta move around this big fuck-off rock, and the more rocks you add to it, the more it starts flowing in weird ways, awkward diversions and stuff. And now you’re blocked up inside yourself, so you start to put blocks outside yourself too, in the world. Y’know?”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“I was an only child. My parents were both smart, but they were flighty, and they loved each other so much, more than they ever loved me. I had to do a lot for myself, from a young age. It wasn't great. Now I feel like my childhood is with me every day. Being alone. Being shut out. Some people, maybe they had a terrible time, maybe a great time, but it isn't with them. I feel like it's always with me. I'm never not there. Do you know what I mean? I mean - how about you?”
― Gwendoline Riley, Sick Notes