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“it may be very clear indeed who “owns” culture. It is pronounced in the official language all must learn to speak, is declared if you can’t afford to buy the garments that you are employed to sew, and is evident if your call to 911 fails to bring emergency assistance to your neighborhood.”
― Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics

“there is nothing more alienating than having one’s pleasures disputed by someone with a theory.”
― Lauren Berlant, Desire/Love

“We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadnesses of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds. In whatever way we do this—through love, work, family, faith, friends, denial, alcohol, drugs, or medication—we build these walls, stone by stone, over a lifetime. One of the most difficult problems is to construct these barriers of such a height and strength that one has a true harbor, a sanctuary away from crippling turmoil and pain, but yet low enough, and permeable enough, to let in fresh seawater that will fend off the inevitable inclination toward brackishness.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“Obsessed with the desire to be happy I lost my life. I moved with the tension of a bow and arrow in an unreality of desires.”
― Clarice Lispector, A Breath of Life