Ava

“I happened to catch a glimpse of my reflection in the window glass.
The image of myself that floated to the surface, tinged with blue against a backdrop of the signs, walls, and windows of the nearby buildings, looked absolutely miserable. Not sad, or tired, but the dictionary definition of a miserable person. This was the woman that I saw in the glass, while an assortment of other objects drifted in and out of the reflection. The space around my head was wild with baby hair or stray hairs that had come free. My shoulders sagged, and the skin around my eyes was sunken. My arms and legs looked stubby while my neck looked long and skinny. The tendons around my collarbone and throat stuck out, and my skin was anything but supple, as if the flesh had been deflated, leaving bizarre diagonal lines on my cheeks. What I saw in the reflection was myself, in a cardigan and faded jeans, at age thirty-four. Just a miserable woman, who couldn’t even enjoy herself on a gorgeous day like this, on her own in the city, desperately hugging a bag full to bursting with the kind of things that other people wave off or throw in the trash the first chance they get.”
― Mieko Kawakami, All the Lovers in the Night

“Sherlock to Watson "By the way, Doctor, I shall want your co-operation.”
“I shall be delighted.”
“You don’t mind breaking the law?”
“Not in the least.”
“Nor running a chance of arrest?”
“Not in a good cause.”
“Oh, the cause is excellent!”
“Then I am your man.”
“I was sure that I might rely on you.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, A Scandal in Bohemia and Other Stories

“I was so scared of being hurt that I'd done nothing. I was so scared of failing, of being hurt, that I choose nothing. I did nothing.”
― Mieko Kawakami, All the Lovers in the Night