threnoidia

“Doctors and nurses offer unconditional care, they treat whomever it is their job to heal. In order to be ethical they must be impartial.
But to be in love is to be partial. It is to be specific. All romantic love is conditional, in that the condition is the persons essential nature. Their themness. If your love for a person isn’t predicated on the condition that they are them, right now as they are, and is instead predicated on their need for that love, or on your thinking that you could do a good job of making that person happier or better, then you are a nurse. You are a robot hero. And maybe you can save the day but you are not a lover. You are not in love.”
― CJ Hauser

“Women disappear, and even if you are famous, it can happen without a sound, without a ripple. I have to assume that one night, when the stars were gleaming over-head, she met a devil on the road like so many of my friends did, and he offered her a spread of cards, flipping them between his pale fingers. Alcoholism, born-again reverence, madness, a quiet cottage, a noisy car wreck, a lonely house on the edge of the desert, a book she could use as a tomb, a single line etched in the boardwalk, they would have flickered by, and taking a deep breath, she would have closed her eyes and chosen.”
― Nghi Vo, Siren Queen

“My life felt unreal and I felt half-invested. I felt indistinct, like someone else's dream.”
― Sarah Manguso, Very Cold People

“Have you ever thought about the enormous courage of trees? I have, and it seems to me amazing, The Lord dumps them down and they just gotta stick it, no matter what happens.”
― Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness