charlotte

“When something bad is actually happening, it's easy to underreact, because a part of you is wired to assume it isn't real. When you stop underreacting, the horror is unique because it is, unfortunately, endless.”
― Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

“And he felt so lonely so close up to the sky, not the rewarding and proud loneliness he had felt when driving the train at night across the plains, but an unforgiving and harsh emptiness, as if he had been rejected by earth and sky and must stay forever now in the between gulf, tired and afraid.”
― Janet Frame, Owls Do Cry

“And so passed one morning and every morning and day but the people growing gentle and together, like old bulbs without promise of bloom, thrown to the rubbish heap and sinking in the filth and blindness to sprout a seperate community of dark, touching tendril and root to yet invisible colour of maimed flowers, narcissus, daffodil, tulip, and crocus-leaf stained with blade of snow.”
― Janet Frame, Owls Do Cry

“I could not stop wasting time. It was crazy. I wanted to do something with my life, but instead I went to sleep, or sung in the shower, or sat and stared at the wall. I couldn't even tell you about anything that I saw. I didn't talk to anybody. The cicadas kept dying outside, and as I dreamed, my mouth grew thick and venomous with silence.”
― Yiwei Chai