Virencia

“We'll act as if all this were a bad dream."

A bad dream.

To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream.

A bad dream.

I remembered everything.

I remembered the cadavers and Doreen and the story of the fig tree and Marco's diamond and the sailor on the Common and Doctor Gordon's wall-eyed nurse and the broken thermometers and the Negro with his two kinds of beans and the twenty pounds I gained on insulin and the rock that bulged between sky and sea like a gray skull.

Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind snow, would numb and cover them.

But they were part of me. They were my landscape.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“Men may be the head of the house, but the women are the neck, and they can turn the head any way they want.”
― Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know About Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind

“Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe. Of course it’s important to know what’s right and what’s wrong. Individual errors in judgment can usually be corrected. As long as you have the courage to admit mistakes, things can be turned around. But intolerant, narrow minds with no imagination are like parasites that transform the host, change form, and continue to thrive. They’re a lost cause, and I don’t want anyone like that coming in here.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Tapi Tuhan juga seperti punya jatah waktu yang boleh kita habiskan
berdua. Sia-sia bertahan, sia-sia melawan.”
― Avianti Armand, Negeri Para Peri