Ellen W

“When she writes, which isn't often, I get insanely jealous of the way her mind works, the fact that she seems to create for her own pleasure and not to make herself known.”
― Lena Dunham, Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"

“I have been envious of male characteristics, if not the men themselves. I'm jealous of the ease with which they seem to inhabit their professional pursuits: the lack of apologizing, of bending over backward to make sure the people around them are comfortable with what they're trying to do. The fact that they are so often free of the people-pleasing instincts I have considered to be a curse of my female existence.”
― Lena Dunham, Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"

“hüzün, which denotes a melancholy that is communal rather than private. Offering no clarity, veiling reality instead, hüzün brings us comfort, softening the view like the condensation on a window when a teakettle has been spouting steam on a winter’s day. Steamed-up windows make me feel hüzün, and I still love getting up and walking over to those windows to trace words on them with my finger. As I shape words and figures on the steamy window, the hüzün inside me dissipates and I can relax; after I have done all my writing and drawing, I can erase it all with the back of my hand and look outside. But the view itself can bring its own hüzün. It is time to come to a better understanding of this feeling that the city of Istanbul carries as its fate.”
― Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul

“You cannot refuse to eat just because there's a chance of being choked.”
― Lisa See, China Dolls