Sarmistha

“To my abusers, the act of setting appropriate boundaries was viewed as hostile aggression. They believed that I was denying them something that belonged to them if I resisted. I was a resource to be exploited for their personal use. I was property who didn’t have any rights over my time, my energy, my body, or my possessions. I viewed myself that way too. I believed that they were justified in being angry with me for saying no but I wasn’t justified in being angry with them for abusing me.”
― Christina Enevoldsen

“The true definition of a phony is a high flyer with low mileage; a person who offers a worldview from the comforts of his/her living room.”
― Johnnie Dent Jr.

“The very fact we use the term "cold-blooded" as a synonym for "heartless" should tell you something about the innate bias we primates hold against reptiles. Do not judge other species by your own social norms.”
― Becky Chambers

“There is a gentrification that is happening to cities, and there is a gentrification that is happening to the emotions too, with a similarly homogenising, whitening, deadening effect. Amidst the glossiness of late capitalism, we are fed the notion that all difficult feeling - depression, anxiety, loneliness, rage - are simply a consequence of unsettled chemistry, a problem to be fixed, rather than a response to structural injustice or, on the other hand, to the native texture of embodiment, of doing time, as David Wojnarowicz memorably put it, in a rented body, with all the attendant grief and frustration that entails.”
― Olivia Laing, The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone