Chiara

“How brief and magical it was that we all lived so close to each other and went in and out of each other’s rooms, and our most important job was to solve mysteries. The temporariness made it all the more important to do the right thing—to follow the right leads.”
― Elif Batuman, Either/Or

“But can you imagine how some of them were envying you your freedom to work, to think, to travel, to enter a room as yourself, not as some child’s mother or some man’s wife?…we have no familiar, ready-made name for a woman who defines herself, by choice, neither in relation to children nor to men, who is self-identified, who has chosen herself.”
― Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution

“I know,' said Erin, and described how she'd lately felt depressed in a new and scary way, which Paul also had felt lately and described as a sadness-based fear, immune to tone and interpretation, as if not meant for humans - more visceral than sadness, but unlike fear because it decreased heart rate and impaired the senses, causing everything to seem 'darker.”
― Tao Lin, Taipei

“There is a kind of sadness in not wanting the things that give so many other people their life's meaning. There can be sadness at not living out a more universal story - the suppose life cycle - how out of one life cycle another cycle is supposed to come. But when out of your life, no new cycle comes, what does that feel like? It feels like nothing. Yet there is a bit of a let-down feeling when the great things that happen in the lives of others - you don't actually want those things for yourself.”
― Sheila Heti, Motherhood