Mimi

“Maybe it’s possible to have more than one home. Maybe it’s possible to belong in a hundred different ways to a hundred different people and places.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers

“It may seem that life is difficult at times but it’s really as simple as breathing in and out,” she read. “Rip open hearts with your fury and tear down egos with your modesty. Be the person you wish you could be, not the person you feel you are doomed to be. Let yourself run away with your feelings. You were made so that someone could love you. Let them love you.”
― Dolly Alderton, Everything I Know About Love

“There are many men who have reminded me of Stu. It's a masculine asset to be the host, the mayor. The confident bonhomie is a kind of shorthand: it's short for having a big dick.
Later, when I was teaching near Prague, I met a woman who liked to discuss Rasputin; she harbored a barely concealed lust for Rasputin and only dated men who had big wild eyes. She said, about Rasputin. "He had a great big dick." No, I thought, but in all likelihood he was an excellent host.”
― Rebecca Rukeyser, The Seaplane on Final Approach

“Near the beginning of “The Portrait of a Lady,” there was mention of an aunt who kept telling people that Isabel was writing a book. In fact, Henry James said, Isabel was not and never had been writing a book. She “had no desire to be an authoress,” “no talent for expression,” and “none of the consciousness of genius,” having only “a general idea that people were right when they treated her as if she were rather superior.” It was one of the few places where Henry James was mean about Isabel.

Well, it made sense. If she could write a book, he would be out of a job. That’s why Madame Bovary had to be too dumb and banal to write “Madame Bovary.” But I wasn’t dumb or banal, and I lived in the future. Nobody was going to trick me into marrying some loser, and even if they did, I would write the goddamn book myself.”
― Elif Batuman, Either/Or