Alina

“We think we tell stories, but stories often tell us, tell us to love or hate, to see or be seen. Often, too often, stories saddle us, ride us, whip us onward, tell us what to do, and we do it without questioning. The task of learning to be free requires learning to hear them, to question them, to pause and hear silence, to name them, and then become a story-teller.”
― Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby

“Better to be the cat gazing coolly down from a high wall, its expression inscrutable. The cat that shunned petting, that needed no one. Why couldn't she be that cat?”
― Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone

“I feel I can give you everything without giving myself away, I whispered in your basement bed. If one does one's solitude right, this is the prize.”
― Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts

“Our eventual fate will be the sum of the stories we told ourselves long enough.”
― Crystal Woods, Write like no one is reading 3