Ile Isobel

“Hope for the best, expect the worst.”
― Angela Carter, Wise Children

“There are things I need to ask her. Not what happened, back then in the time I lost, because now I know that. I need to ask her why.

If she remembers. Perhaps she’s forgotten the bad things, what she said to me, what she did. Or she does remember them, but in a minor way, as if remembering a game, or a single prank, a single trivial secret, of the kind girls tell and then forget.

She will have her own version. I am not the centre of her story, because she herself is that. But I could give her something you can never have, except from another person: what you look like from outside. A reflection. This is part of herself I could give back to her.

We are like the twins in old fables, each of whom has been given half a key.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

“I'm a fool, to confuse this with goodness. I am not good.
I know too much to be good. I know myself.
I know myself to be vengeful, greedy, secretive and sly.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

“Everything is post these days, as if we're all just a footnote to something earlier that was real enough to have a name of its own.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye