Pauline

“The dead move on, but the living, we just stay here.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Refugees

“Pablo volvió a reírse. Yo ya estaba harta de sonrisitas enigmáticas, harta de que me trataran como a un corderito blanco con un lazo rosa alrededor del cuello, harta de no controlar la situación. No es que no fuera capaz de imaginarme posibles desarrollos, es que los descartaba de antemano porque me parecían inverosímiles, inverosímil que él quisiera de verdad perder el tiempo conmigo, no entendía por qué insistía de hecho en perder el tiempo conmigo.”
― Almudena Grandes, Las edades de Lulú

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar