Katie

“Daisy Miller dies of Roman fever. Nana Coupeau dies of smallpox. Ophelia dies by drowning herself. Tess Durbeyfield dies by execution. Emma Bovary dies by swallowing arsenic. Anna Karenina dies by throwing herself under a train. I did not die.”
― Melissa Febos, Girlhood

“My point is, there’s always something. I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“I knew his whole being. There was not one part of his body I could not touch, not one part of his personality I did not know at least as well as my own. When we went on long rides through the woods, I would tell him everything I knew and then explain why I loved him so much, why he was special, different from other horses, how I would take care of him for the rest of his life, never leave him or let anyone hurt him. After the ride I would take him to graze in an empty field. I would lie down on his broad bare back and think I was the luckiest girl alive, his weight shifting beneath me as he moved toward the next bite of grass. Sometimes I took him to the stream and laughed as he pawed at the water, screaming in delight when I tried to lie down in it. Best of all was when I happened to find him lying down in his stall. Carefully, so as not to spook him, I'd creep in and lie down on top of his giant body, his great animal heat and breath rising up to swallow my own smaller heat and less substantial air.”
― Lucy Grealy, Autobiography of a Face

“Say the ape, the Eurasian magpie, or the elephant looks in the mirror and recognizes the paint smeared on her body by the researcher. The animal who passes the mirror test then investigates her own body for the offending mark. Say she finds nothing. How long before she trusts the reflection over her own body? Say the mark on her reflection is confirmed by all the other elephants. How long before her reflection replaces herself? Say the mark is not of paint but instead a word applied to her.”
― Melissa Febos, Girlhood