开卷

[thecomfortofmybooks]

But things here are not like things in a college dorm room. Not because this world isn't full of dreams for the future or folks who like to get rowdy and fucked-up on a Friday night, but because here is 'like' nowhere. This is its own universe, enclosed by chain-link fences and kept just outside cities off long long dirt roads- close enough to visit but far enough to forget.

Tessa Fontaine, The Electric Woman.

[thecomfortofmybooks]

How do we arrive at our realizations? There wasn't any sparkling, trumpet-sounding, aha moment of recognition for me, no tidy turning point. Just a gradual understanding, as I became an adult, met more people, saw some of the world, that the person my mom was did not align with the person I had believed her to be.

Tessa Fontaine, The Electric Woman.

[thecomfortofmybooks]

There was more I wanted to know. I wanted to know how to make sense of my attraction to this world of illusions and danger. Where the work was physically grueling, where the task was to transform into someone else, someone who could transcend a fragile human body. Someone who was and was not herself on stage.

Tessa Fontaine, The Electric Woman.

[thecomfortofmybooks]

Solitude steals one's public self. The face I wear at home is the face I wear in the world. My true unmitigated self. It took me time and faith to relax into the social acceptability of my private self. I can be fierce.

Donna Ward, ‘Winter’s Road’ in She I Dare Not Name.

[thecomfortofmybooks]

Location is not the difference. Attitude is the difference. A person unaware that sound inhabits silence can be terrified to the point of insanity. It is as simple and as awful as that.

Donna Ward, ‘Winter’s Road’ in She I Dare Not Name.

[thecomfortofmybooks]

Communing with the world is the gift of solitude, not silence. Communing occurs when a person enters into silence. And one enters silence through the terrain of solitude. If one is well disposed to solitude, if one is born to it, the road to silence is easier. Even then, silence is elusive, always beneath another sound.

Donna Ward, ‘Winter’s Road’ in She I Dare Not Name.

[chewbacca]

Matilda (1996), dir. Danny DeVito

[thecomfortofmybooks]

The main problem for Maggie, as several bystanders observe, is that she's too aggressive. Victims aren't supposed to be snarly. She is crying, but not torrentially, not as if her vagina were brutalized. She is not crying appropriately.

Lisa Taddeo, Three Women

[thecomfortofmybooks]

She wished she had stayed there, in the warm outline of her dent in their bed and beside the man who gave her as much of his life as he had power to give, and wished only that she had held him forever. There should be a stronger word than regret.

Lisa Taddeo, Three Women

[thecomfortofmybooks]

The problem is, she's starting to understand, is that a man will never let you fall completely into hell. He will scoop you up right before you drop the final inch so that you cannot blame him for sending you there. He keeps you in a diner-like purgatory instead, waiting and hoping and taking orders.

Lisa Taddeo, Three Women

[thecomfortofmybooks]

Where everyone rubs against you, stands so close you hear their blood flow, skin crawl, hearts jump. Like the sound of trains running at night.

Raj Kamal Jha, She Will Build Him a City.

[thecomfortofmybooks]

I've been sitting in the same exact spot for these eight years, and I see the passage of the seasons. I see the alligator that hangs out below my window in the summer, and when she lays her eggs and they hatch, I hear the barking of the baby gators. There's manatees and the dolphins that come by. There's a night heron that sits just below my window all night long every night, except when the algae bloom. And the sunsets and sunrises are like snowflakes - there's no two that are exactly alike.

Barbara Abelhauser, a Bridgetender from Callings: The Purpose and Passion of Work.

[thecomfortofmybooks]

We can't take one language inland from the coast because you're taking it out of its homeland, you're bringing it out of its sacredness. It is such an important thing to watch your boundaries, your creeks, your rivers and mountains. Holding language is another wonderful way of looking after your boundaries. Some people think language is just talking, here and there, but it's much more. It represents a border and it holds culture and law.

Max Dulumunmun Harrison, My People's Dreaming.

[thecomfortofmybooks]

Forgiveness is such an important part of your recovery. It is one of the highest extreme levels of acceptance. It's one of the greatest achievements if you can forgive - your spirit stays free. It's not caught up in that turmoil of anger and that resentment that is carried to your grave or through your life. You must strive to be free of that to have a free spirit, to have a spirit that is not tarnished in that sense. It's a pretty big call to forgive.

Max Dulumunmun Harrison, My People's Dreaming.

[thecomfortofmybooks]

Children are touched by heaven - their every breath, every laugh, every touch a sip of water to the desert wanderer. I could not have known this as a child, but I know it as a mother, a truth I learned as my own heart grew, bent, danced, and broke for each of my children.

Nadia Hashimi, When the Moon is Low.

[thecomfortofmybooks]

He learned to love the transience of everything, an acceptance that can only come when we near the end of the road. Whether the end comes today or tomorrow does not matter to him. He is ready to be returned to the earth. In and out, he will breathe the dust of the crumbling orchard walls and the soil of the gardens every day until, like an hourglass, his lungs fill. Time will stop then.

Nadia Hashimi, When the Moon is Low.

[thecomfortofmybooks]

Can you even begin to count the myriad ways in which your life might be affected by the choices of other people - people you have never met, whose existence is utterly hidden from you - are making everyday?

Natalie Haynes, The Children of Jocasta.