Rosaria Pusch

“For as long as I could remember, I had been transparent to myself, unselfconscious, learning, doing, most of every day. Now I was in my own way; I myself was a dark object I could not ignore. I couldn't remember how to forget myself. I didn't want to think about myself, to reckon myself in, to deal with myself every livelong minute on top of everything else - but swerve as I might, I couldn't avoid it. I was a boulder blocking my own path. I was a dog barking between my own ears, a barking dog who wouldn't hush.

So this was adolescence. Is this how the people around me had died on their feet - inevitably, helplessly? Perhaps their own selves eclipsed the sun for so many years the world shriveled around them, and when at least their inescapable orbits had passed through these dark egoistic years it was too late, they had adjusted.

Must I then lose the world forever, that I had so loved? Was it all, the whole bright and various planet, where I had been so ardent about finding myself alive, only a passion peculiar to children, that I would outgrow even against my will?”
― Annie Dillard, An American Childhood

“It does little good to regret a choice. So often people say, “If only I had known,” implying they would’ve acted differently in a given situation. It is true that desires of the moment can blind one’s sight of the future. Revenge is not as sweet as the adage claims. Yet who could pass a chance to taste it? And if the chance were allowed to slip by, would the fool regret his lack of action? ”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“Sometimes parents loved their sons so much that they made a romance out of their lives. They thought our youth could help us overcome everything. Maybe moms and dads forgot about this one small fact: being on the verge of seventeen could be harsh and painful and confusing. Being on the verge of seventeen could really suck.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“It is weird that the same two parents can come together and make two such different people.”
― Sara Pascoe, Weirdo