Aviva Goldstein

“Carmel couldn’t figure it out. How had she ended up with this job, for which she had never applied? Was it the sex – which got good for about two minutes and then wasn’t? Or staying over? Maybe that was where the spell got cast. Maybe, if you were a woman, the act of sleeping was enough. It could happen on a bus, you could do it on a plane. You could nod off, wake up beside some strange man who was now yours to mind for life. Carmel wanted to laugh, but actually there was an inner shrieking in her head going, I have a daughter. I have a daughter. I have a daughter, you bitch, she is only nine.”
― Anne Enright, The Wren, the Wren

“the shock of the water—there is nothing like it on land. The cool clear liquid flowing over every inch of your skin. The temporary reprieve from gravity. The miracle of your own buoyancy as you glide, unhindered, across the glossy blue surface of the pool. It’s just like flying. The pure pleasure of being in motion. The dissipation of all want. I’m free. You are suddenly aloft. Adrift. Ecstatic. Euphoric. In a rapturous and trancelike state of bliss. And if you swim for long enough you no longer know where your own body ends and the water begins and there is no boundary between you and the world. It’s nirvana.”
― Julie Otsuka, The Swimmers

“320 West 120th Street, the home of the Dumas Club, was built in 1898 by Mortimer Bacall, a German immigrant who made his fortune in patent medicines. His most popular tonic was advertised under many names, the most well known of which was Dr. Abraham’s Pills, which purported to cure “city ailments” caused by urban living, the “noxious air,” “insalubrious plumbing,” and “excessive proximity of one’s neighbors.” The modern city was a new animal requiring new remedies. Bacall possessed the dexterity to invent both the infirmity and the cure.”
― Colson Whitehead, Crook Manifesto