Melon

“No crime is confounding and punitive the way rape is. No other violent offense comes with a built-in alibi that can instantly exonerate the criminal and place responsibility on the victim. There is no glorified interpersonal behavior that can be used to explain robbery or murder the way that sex can be used to explain rape. The best-case scenario for a rape victim in terms of adjudication is the worst-case scenario in terms of experience: for people to believe you deserve justice, you have to be destroyed. The fact that feminism is ascendant and accepted does not change this. The world that we believe in, that we're attempting to make real and tangible, is still not the world that exists.”
― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

“That had been the worst part of childhood: people telling you how lucky you were to live in a carefree time with no responsibilities”
― Elif Batuman, Either/Or

“Quality of life": as if we knew it, and could measure it. I wanted to know what it was: the quality of life.”
― Elif Batuman, Either/Or

“We get so used to twenty-four-year-old actors playing high school students, and we seem so mature in our own memories, that we forget actual teenagers have limited vocabularies, have bad posture and questionable hygiene, laugh too loud, don’t know how to dress for their body types, want chicken nuggets and macaroni for lunch. It’s easier to see the twelve-year-olds they just were than the twenty-year-olds they’ll soon be.”
― Rebecca Makkai, I Have Some Questions For You