Isabel

“We want because we’re wanting . Both senses of the word. The lacking and the longing, all rolled into one. The more you find yourself wanting, the more you want.”
― Coco Mellors, Cleopatra and Frankenstein

“I want to tell Frank that there is no wrong half, no halves at all in fact, that if there were, we'd be busy halving ourselves again and again until we got to the little square of us that was good and then we would all be free to love and be loved.”
― Coco Mellors, Cleopatra and Frankenstein

“Only then, in the quietness beneath, did the new feeling arrive. It was shame . Shame that she had quit her job, shame that she did not paint, shame that she had married Frank, shame that he was in love with someone else, shame that she had run to Anders for comfort, shame that he had discarded her, shame that Frank drank like he did, shame that they let Jesus die, shame that Frank had let her tear apart the whole apartment looking for her before coming clean about what he’d done, shame that she’d covered for him and told everyone that Jesus had escaped, shame that it was her secret now too, shame that she was too afraid to leave him when she said she would, shame that her mother was dead and she could not ask her for advice, shame that her mother didn’t want to be her mother enough to not be dead, just shame, shame, shame.”
― Coco Mellors, Cleopatra and Frankenstein

“The pleasure wasn't often pleasure; it was release from pain. It was binding yourself and feeling good when the bandages came off, it was cutting a hole in your leg so it could feel it heal. I had suffered, and I had made the suffering into something I could consider good. I made it so that suffering was a kind of work.”
― Megan Nolan, Acts of Desperation