Aenea Jones

“Some children spend their days climbing trees. I spent mine in books. This was how I drowned the inconsolable sorrow in which my father's abandonment had left me. Romance and passion filled my imagination. I was far too young for the novels I read, and I understood little of them except that love makes you suffer. Why would anyone want to be destroyed so prematurely?”
― Vanessa Springora, Consent

“She was in such a bad way, she couldn't see that her single life was much of a burden for me as it was for her.
A father, conspicuous only by his absence, who left an unfathomable void in my life. A pronounced taste for reading. A certain sexual precocity. And, most of all, an enormous need to be seen.
All the necessary elements were now in place.”
― Vanessa Springora, Consent

“One of the strange things about adulthood is that you are your current self, but you are also all the selves you used to be, the ones you grew out of but can't ever quite get rid of.”
― John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

“Since my father had fallen off the radar, I had begun desperately trying to attract men's attention. It was a waste of effort. I was completely unattractive; I lacked the slightest physical allure.”
― Vanessa Springora