Ana

“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

“Love drains you, takes with it much of your blood sugar and water weight. You are like a house slowly losing its electricity, the fans slowing, the lights dimming and flickering; the clocks stop and go and stop.”
― Lorrie Moore, Self-Help

“Between skin and skin, there is only light.”
― John Fowles, The Magus

“It's all rehearsed, in a weird way. People spend so much time dramatizing trivial bullshit that when an actual tragedy happens, I wonder how anyone could possibly act out their grief in a natural way. The tragedies we steel ourselves for never come for years and years, and our negative fantasies wear us down inch by inch, so that when the blow actually comes, there's little of us left to care.”
― Halle Butler, The New Me