Ricardo

“Although the most powerful art, it sometimes seems to me, it's an experience and a going-through; it is love comprehended by, expressed and enacted through the artwork itself, and for this reason has perhaps been more frequently created by people who feel themselves to be completely alone in this world —and therefore wholly focused on the task at hand— than by those surrounded by "loved ones".”
― Zadie Smith, Intimations

“Trying to preserve some "space for yourself" in the crowded domestic sphere feels like obsessively cupping your hands around thin air. You carve it out, the time you need, after much anxiety and debate, and get into the separate space and look between your hands and there it is — nothing. An empty victory.”
― Zadie Smith, Intimations

“And, touching his hair with her lips, she thought, she will never be so happy again, but stopped herself, remembering how it angered her husband that she should say that. Still, it was true. They were happier now than they would ever be again.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“She did not feel merely snubbed back in her instinct, but made aware of the pettiness of some part of her, and of human relations, how flawed they are, how despicable, how self-seeking, at their best.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse