Elena Sala

“My dreams fill me and help me eat time.”
― Wilma Stockenström, The Expedition to the Baobab Tree

“Would it be said they were abandoned or taken, the way people said a girl was attacked, a woman was raped, this femaleness always at the centre, as if womanhood itself were the cause of these things? As if the girls somehow, through the natural way of things, did it to themselves.”
― Charlotte Wood, The Natural Way of Things

“Do not piss as you stand and face the sun, but do it after the sun sets and before it rises, and even then do not be naked, for nights belong to the gods.
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Sire your children when you return from a feast of the gods, not when you return from an ill-omened burial.
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The sixth day of the month does not favor plants but is good for the birth of boys; it does not favor either the birth or the marriage of girls. But gelding of kids and lambs hurts less then.”
― Hesiod, Theogony / Works and Days

“Nowadays, she said, people were hungry to know everything, thinking that they could understand it all, as if enlightenment were just around the corner. But, she said, in fact there was no control, and understanding would not lessen any pain. The best we could do in this life was to pass through it, like smoke through the branches, suffering, until we either reached a state of nothingness, or else suffered elsewhere.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow