Niki’s Reviews > Hungerstone > Status Update

‘It was easier to avoid the pain when there was nowhere for it to go.’

“It is terrible to be alive. But it is worse to be dead to ourselves.”

‘One way to ensure my future was to populate it not with people who cared for me but with people for whom it would be deeply inconvenient if I were to be absent.’

‘To be exposed as vulnerable, as not knowing, was the greatest danger possible; death, at least, offered certainty; to be vulnerable meant being at the mercy of others, one’s whole selfhood at risk.’

‘I follow her like a dog after its master and I hate myself for it.’

‘I cannot give what [is wanted]. All I can offer is this fiction, a place to hide.’

‘Disappointment tells us what we truly wanted. And to want is to be alive.’

‘I cannot let myself sink. These waters are too deep, and I do not know if there is a bottom to them.’

‘Night feels like a freedom; the world recedes, and the darkness welcomes me just as I am.’

‘In this place I know who I am, and all my suffering is mastered.’