FedericaL.

“Right. I look fine. Except I don't,' said Zora, tugging sadly at her man's nightshirt. This was why Kiki had dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldn't be able to protect them from self-disgust. To that end she had tried banning television in the early years, and never had a lipstick or a woman's magazine crossed the threshold of the Belsey home to Kiki's knowledge, but these and other precautionary measures had made no difference. It was in the air, or so it seemed to Kiki, this hatred of women and their bodies-- it seeped in with every draught in the house; people brought it home on their shoes, they breathed it in off their newspapers. There was no way to control it.”
― Zadie Smith, On Beauty

“When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter very much, do they?”
― Virginia Woolf

“The ideal place for me is the one in which it is most natural to live as a foreigner.”
― Italo Calvino, The Uses of Literature

“Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five