Jordan

“that’s really what history mostly is: masses of people doing ordinary things.”
― Bill Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life

“To be naked is to be oneself.
To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude. ( The sight of it as an object stimulates the use of it as an object.) Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display.
To be naked is to be without disguise.
To be on display is to have the surface of one's own skin, the hairs of one's own body, turned into a disguise which, in that situation, can never be discarded. The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress.”
― John Berger, Ways of Seeing

“She wasn’t a bird in a cage. A bird in a cage, when the cage is opened, can still fly away. She was a bird embroidered onto a screen — a white bird in clouds of gold stitched onto a screen of melancholy satin. The years passed; the bird’s feathers darkened, mildewed, and were eaten by moths, but the bird stayed on the screen even in death.”
― Eileen Chang, Love in a Fallen City

“Everyone loves a particular version of you, and when that person is gone, that version goes with them.”
― Liane Moriarty, Here One Moment