Ashley

“In little towns, lives roll along so close to one another; loves and hates beat about, their wings almost touching. On the sidewalks along which everybody comes and goes, you must, if you walk abroad at all, at some time pass within a few inches of the man who cheated and betrayed you, or the woman you desire more than anything else in the world. Her skirt brushes against you. You say good-morning, and go on. It is a close shave. Out in the world the escapes are not so narrow.”
― Willa Cather, Lucy Gayheart

“I hate now for men to dote in this way, the ones who don't know me. Their praise lands uncertainly in the air somewhere between the two of us, because it doesn't belong to me. I hate to hear them tell me what I am, even or especially when what they think I am is kind or brilliant or beautiful. I hate when they insist that I have no faults, that my laziness or violence or cruelty simply don't exist.

When they speak this way I am even less in my body than usual, feeling the sickness of a stranger look me in the eye and describe what is not there. What I am feeling is their disregard for my reality. I am being made to wear whatever particular fantasy they wish to project.

Each time it happens I have to restrain myself from screaming in their faces to prove I am not what they believe me to be. In these moments I am happy with my ugliness and want them to see it. Whatever badness I am I want to be it, to be as much like whatever my self is as possible; as far from the stranger's projection as possible.”
― Megan Nolan, Acts of Desperation

“Life was a simple thing of love and work and courage. Nothing else mattered. To have those, one had everything.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, Spring Came On Forever

“She was struggling with something she had never felt before. A new conception of art? It came closer than that. A new kind of personality? But it was much more. It was a discovery about life, a revelation of love as a tragic force, not a melting mood, of passion that drowns like black water.”
― Willa Cather, Lucy Gayheart