Hannah Lee

“He was angry at the things that bound the woman … and at the woman who let herself be bound.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“When I was very little, it was cold and dreary also, but I was certain it would be different when I should grow and be ten years old. It must be very nice to be ten, I thought, - and one would not be nearly so lonesome. But when the years passed and I was ten it was just exactly as lonesome. And
when I was ten everything was very hard to understand.
But it will surely be different when I am seventeen, I said, - I will know so much when I am seventeen. But when I was seventeen it was even more lonely; and everything was still harder to understand.
And again I said - faintly - everything will become clearer in a few years more, and I will wonder to think how stupid I have always been. But now the few years more have gone and here I am in loneliness that is more hopeless and harder to bear than when I was very little. Still, I wonder indeed
to think how stupid I have been - and now I am not so stupid. I do not tell myself that it will be different when I am five-and-twenty.
For I know that it will not be different.
I know that it will be the same dreariness, the same Nothingness, the same loneliness.”
― Mary MacLane, I Await the Devil's Coming

“And always while I am still young, there is that dim light, the Future. But it is indeed a dim, dim light, and ofttimes there’s a treachery in it.”
― Mary MacLane, I Await the Devil's Coming

“Only a shipwrecked person who has just escaped drowning could understand the psychology of someone who breaks out in laughter just because he is able to breathe”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes