Sarah

“It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they're supposed to be.
I've been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?”
― Pat Schneider, Another River

“I like people to be unhappy because I like them to have souls.”
― Virginia Woolf

“Sitting on the divan, she touched a finger to the bullet wound in his chest. It seemed so small, so incapable of creating the exodus of blood which had drenched his clothes and skin as he lay in the hospital, waiting for her to claim him. Death has been instantaneous, they said, as if there were a relief in that. She did not want death to have been instantaneous; she wanted to have at least held his hand as he lay dying and said goodbye to him in terms other than the, ‘Why are you doing again? You’ll find nothing. Stay. Oh all right, go,’ that had been her farewell to him that morning.

Stay. Stay. Stay. She should have repeated it like a madwoman, banged her head against the wall in a frenzy, hit him and wept. She should have said it just one more time, just a little more forcefully. She should have taken his dear, sweet head in her hands and kissed his eyes and forehead. Stay.”
― Kamila Shamsie, Burnt Shadows

“What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another?”
― Alan Paton