Jenny (Reading Envy)

“All my life I have overheard, all my life I have listened to what people will let slip when they think you are part of their we. A we is so powerful. It is the most corrupt and formidable institution on earth. Its hands are full of the crispest and most persuasive currency. Its mouth is full of received, repeating language. The we closes its ranks to protect the space inside it, where the air is different. It does not protect people. It protects its own shape.”
― Patricia Lockwood, Priestdaddy

“The question for someone who was raised in a closed circle and then leaves it, is what is the us, and what is the them, and how do you ever move from one to the other?”
― Patricia Lockwood, Priestdaddy

“How many times have we tried to stand up fully only for them to tell us that we're being violent for just trying to be whole, that our attempted wholeness was hurting them? They've lied to us for such a long time. And I think when we've been taught to be afraid of ourselves in such ways, we absorb some of our teachers' fear.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir

“How do you spell love in Alexandria?' he said at last, softly. 'That is the question. Sleeplessness, loneliness, bonheur, chagrin -- I do not want to harm or annoy her, but I feel that somehow, somewhere, she must need me as I need her.”
― Lawrence Durrell, Mountolive