DeanJean

“The mantra these days is “talk about your feelings.” It sounds like good advice and perhaps it is. It is said, though, by those who can already speak freely. For others, there are consequences to talking, to admitting to colleagues, friends, family—many of whom are struggling too—that you are struggling. There are difficulties in even finding the words, and then in facing the distinct possibility of someone mumbling something awkward or dismissive in response, breaking eye contact. Words have a weight. Sometimes they are lead.”
― Darran Anderson, Inventory: A Memoir

“James was teaching me how to knit baby clothes, but I didn’t get on very well when he wasn’t there, but I did manage two vests that resembled badly made porridge.”
― Barbara Comyns

“Sinden desired something in her which she hardly even knew that she possessed. Only yesterday she had been an irrevelant child; how amazing to find herself now at life's core, the object of such brusque, blind, heedless, hungry pursuit, as if nothing else in the world mattered.”
― Tessa Hadley, The Party

“All the golden guineas had gone now and we only had the little I earned as a model. With this we had to pay for food, light and heat, and laundry and of course rent. Sometimes we were several weeks behind and the landlady would ask us for money each time we went in or out of the house. I would hear her talking about us to the other people who lived on the floor below and felt dreadfully ashamed.

Charles did not mind. He just said she was a silly old bitch. As soon as Charles started to paint he forgot about the cold and money worries. That is how artists should be, but I was only a commercial artist, so I went on worrying.”
― Barbara Comyns, Our Spoons Came from Woolworths