Kate Esther

“The things that make life comfortable are always unacceptable, if you look at them square on. Someone, somewhere, is always suffering so you can be happy. Which is why most people spend their time looking the other direction.”
― 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

“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

“War is a narrative: it might almost be said to embody the narrative principle itself. It is the attempt to create a story of life, to create agreement. In war, there is no point of view; war is the end of point of view, where violence is welcomed as the final means of arriving at a common version of events.”
― Rachel Cusk, Coventry: Essays