Elena Sala

“I asked my mother what she believed about the soul and she thought for a moment. Then, looking not at me but at the hard, white light before us, she said that she believed that we were all essentially nothing, just series of sensations and desires, none of it lasting. When she was growing up, she said that she had never thought of herself in isolation, but rather as inextricably linked to others. 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.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“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

“Lo que la naturaleza no te da, el infierno te lo presta. Ahí, en ese Parque contiguo al centro de la ciudad, el cuerpo de las travestis toma prestado del infierno la sustancia de su hechizo.”
― Camila Sosa Villada, Las malas

“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