A Great Halo And A Tightening In The Throat

“Tell me what you know about the body, and I will tell you how it must turn against itself.”

— Seam: ‘Interview with a Birangona’ by Tarfia Faizullah

of loveliness in the snow and faithlessness in the flood;

- Virginia Woolf, Orlando

The only dream worth having, I told her, is to dream that you will live while you're alive and die only when you're dead. (Prescience? Perhaps.) 'Which means exactly what?' (Arched eyebrows, a little annoyed.) I tried to explain, but didn't do a very good job of it. Sometimes I need to write to think. So I wrote it down for her on a paper napkin. This is what I wrote: To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.

Arundhati Roy, The End of Imagination

How imagining death can make it easier 

to live and I agree and say, It’s called die

before you die.

- Ada Limón, The Long Ride

In a moment I could destroy the entire legend, from beginning to end, destroy everything, except the fundamentals

Anaïs Nin, Henry and June

Nothing, however, can be more arrogant, though nothing is commoner than to assume that of Gods there is only one, and of religions none but the speaker’s.

- Virginia Woolf, Orlando

those eyes which looked as if they had been fished from the bottom of the sea

- Virginia Woolf, Orlando

I lay exhaling human feelings

Anaïs Nin, Henry and June

they had guessed, as always happens between lovers, everything of any importance about each other in two seconds at the utmost.

- Virginia Woolf, Orlando

Tears are a sign of powerlessness, a ‘woman’s weapon.’ It has been a very long war.

- Heather Christle, The Crying Book