Isa

“Perhaps you never have time when you are alone? You only acquire it by watching it go by in others".”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“I felt as if this pain would never be appeased, that it had me in its grip for ever, that it would prevent me from devoting myself to anything else, and that I was allowing it to do so. I think that is what they call being consumed with remorse.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“Here is the grand sweep of civilization’s paw, stretched against the black between the stars, a comfort to every ship’s captain when she looks out into the void and hopes not to see anything looking back. Here, in star-charts, the division of the universe into empire and otherwise, into the world and not the world.”
― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire

“Being beautiful, was that for men?'
'Yes. Some women say that it is for ourselves. What on earth can we do with it? I could have loved myself whether I was hunchbacked or lame, but to be loved by others, you had to be beautiful.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men