Mags

“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“It's your body, you can treat it however you please. The only area where you're free to do just as you like.”
― Han Kang, The Vegetarian

“Had they known the difficulties that were to befall them, they might not have been so rash in falling in love. But perhaps there was no way of avoiding it. Fate, karma, the will of the Gods… call it what you like, it was surely meant to happen. After all, in all the vastness of the Universe they had been thrown together.”
― Isabel Greenberg, The Encyclopedia of Early Earth

“We are all, Esme decides, just vessels through which identities pass: we are lent features, gestures, habits, then we hand them on. Nothing is our own. We begin in the world as anagrams of our antecedents.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox