Kristina

“Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living. You said I killed you--haunt me then. The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe--I know that ghosts have wandered the earth. Be with me always--take any form--drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live.”
― Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

“The floor, the tight-packed rows of suited men, operates with a lurching autonomy. Even after weeks without strategic direction from this glass box. The men are laughing, breathing, talking in twos or threes, gathered around a screen. Or standing, chests puffed, and pointing. Punctuated by an occasional woman. Some crouch down, their noses in plastic trays of early dinner or late lunch. There’s a stink to it. So many men talking and sweating and burping and coughing and existing – packed in sleeve to sleeve. Dry, weathered faces; soft, flabby cheeks; grease-shined foreheads. Necks bursting from as-yet-unbuttoned collars. All shades of pink, beige, tan. Fingers stabbing at keyboards and meaty fists wrapped around phone receivers. Or handsfree, gesturing and talking into slender headsets while tossing and catching a ball or pen.

Is this it – the crescendo of my career?”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“No, the Arctic does not yield its secret for the price of a ship's ticket. You must live through the long night, the storms, and the destruction of human pride. You must have gazed on the deadness of all things to grasps their livingness. In the return of light, in the magic of the ice, in the life-rhythm of the animals observed in the wilderness, in the natural laws of all being, revealed here in their completeness, lies the secret of the Arctic and the overpowering beauty of its lands.”
― Christiane Ritter, A Woman in the Polar Night