Pallavi Barnwal

“Speaking two languages may seem a relative affluence, but more often it entails the problems of maintaining a second establishment even though your body can be in one place at a time. When I return to Urdu, I feel shocked at my own neglect of a space so intimate to me: like relearning the proportions of a once-familiar room, it takes me by surprise to recollect that I need not feel grief, I can eat grief; that I need not bury my mother but instead can offer her into the earth, for I am in Urdu now.”
― Sara Suleri, Meatless Days

“Women may come to the recovery process to "fix" their relationships, but what they end up learning is how to rescue and restore themselves. Many women believe, and you may too, that they need to speak and act differently so their partner behaves more favorably toward them. If your partner blames you for what "you made him do to you," over time you will end up blaming yourself. Your task is to realize that you are not responsible for his abusive behavior. Women tend to work hard to avoid being hurt or to seop their partners from abusing them, but they aren't successful. You cannot make your partner abuse you and you can't make him not abuse you. These are his choices and his alone. The task is to refocus on yourself and your recovery.”
― Carol A Lambert, Women with Controlling Partners: Taking Back Your Life from a Manipulative or Abusive Partner

“A shrink once told me that an expectation is a resentment waiting to be born.”
― John Verdon, Shut Your Eyes Tight

“The road swerved left. The crash of waves morphed into the rumble of thunder, and the black asphalt tapered to become a slender stretch of rope. She followed it up into the darkness, night spilling around and below her as someone knocked over the ink-jar of the sky and scattered its liquid to the furthest corners, dislodging silver shards of moon that bounced off her umbrella.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up