mehg-hen

“I was too irritable from the drive to go straight into the D. H. Lawrence Birthplace Museum and Gift Shop so I ordered a calming cup of tea in the White Peacock Cafe.
'Mug or cup?'
'Cup please,' I said, thinking that I could have said 'I said "cup".' I said cup because I have never enjoyed tea from a mug - and for that matter, only rarely from a cup. Basically I don't like tea but what else is there? Life is really no more than a search for a hot drink one likes.”
― Geoff Dyer, Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence

“And we hate people for making mistakes so much more than we love them for doing good that the easiest way to live is to do nothing, say nothing, and love no one.”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

“These days, loneliness is the new cancer—a shameful, embarrassing thing, brought upon yourself in some obscure way. A fearful, incurable thing, so horrifying that you dare not mention it; other people don’t want to hear the word spoken aloud for fear that they might too be afflicted, or that it might tempt fate into visiting a similar horror upon them.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“The Kennedy men were also unabashed chauvinists, as were the great majority of men at the time, including Phil. They liked other bright men, and they liked girls, but they didn't really know how to relate to middle-aged women, in whom they didn't have a whole lot of interest. This attitude made life difficult for middle-aged wives especially, and induced--or fed--feelings of uncertainty in many of us in those years. Though the men were polite, we somehow knew we had no place in their spectrum. My ever-present terror of being boring often overwhelmed me in social situations with the president and at the White House, particularly whenever I was face to face with the president himself or one of his main advisers, and my fear was a real guarantee of being boring, since it paralyzed and silenced me.”
― Katherine Graham, Personal History (Pulitzer Prize Winner): A Memoir