ŷ������

“I don’t feel guilt at being unsociable, though I may sometimes regret it because my loneliness is painful. But when I move into the world, it feels like a moral fall �� like seeking love in a whorehouse.”
― Susan Sontag, As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980

“Almost every woman I have ever met has a secret belief that she is just on the edge of madness, that there is some deep, crazy part within her, that she must be on guard constantly against ‘losing control�� �� of her temper, of her appetite, of her sexuality, of her feelings, of her ambition, of her secret fantasies, of her mind.”
― Elana Dykewomon, Sinister Wisdom 36: Surviving Psychiatric Assault & Creating Emotional Well-Being in Our Communities

“All the women in the show hated each other, hated each other so much, just so they could avoid hating their husbands. Only their little dogs, blinking from their laps, seemed real: they were the women’s souls, Alex decided, tiny souls trotting behind them on a leash.”
― Emma Cline, The Guest

“Холодні руки матері, які вона несподівано поклала мені на шию, неначе намагалася змусити полюбити її.”
― Емма Клайн, The Girls

“Колись, за сивої давнини, людина з подивом прислухалася до ритмічного гупання, яке долинало з глибини її грудей, і думала собі, що ж ото воно може означати. Не могла вона ототожнювати себе з тілом, що було їй таке чуже і невідоме. Тіло було кліткою, а всередині тієї клітки ховалося те, що дивилося, слухало, жахалося, думало і дивувалося; оте щось, яке залишалося, коли відняти від нього тіло, була душа.
Звісно, сьогодні тіло вже перестало бути таїною, у грудях калатає серце, усі це знають, а ніс - це просто кінець рурки, яка стирчить назовні, щоб усотувати в легені кисень. Обличчя - просто панель приладів, де відображаються всі тілесні механізми: зір, слух, дихання, мислення.
Відколи людина може називати частини свого тіла, те тіло менше її турбує. Відтепер відомо і те, що душа - це тільки діяльність сірої речовини мозку. Дуальність души й тіла маскується науковою термінологією; сьогодні це вже стало старомодним забобоном, з якого всі кепкують.
Але досить закохатися до нестями і раптом почути, як у тебе бурчить у тельбухах, як та лірична ілюзія наукової ери, єдність души й тіла, відразу ж розвіюється.”
― Мілан Кундера, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Ох, філологіє! Ох, великомученице! Хто тебе не зважувався брати на муки! Кожен, хто пару слів тямить написати, та ще - не дай Боже - якусь чужу мову зна, - уже вважа себе коли не за справжнього лінгвіста, то хоч за таку людину, яка сміє авторитетно вирікати свій суд про філологічні й лінгвістичні справи. Всі інші науки не такі безталанні, не такі беззахисні перед профанами. Ніхто вам не зважиться (бо попросту посоромиться), не бувши спеціялістом, споритися проти астронома, ляпати дурниці проти техніка, плескати нісенітниці проти хіміка; ну, а в філологічних питаннях кожен-кожен забирає голос... і віщає.”
― Ahatanhel Krymsky, Виривки з мемуарів одного старого гріховоди. Вибране

“Girls love each other like animals. There is something ferocious and unself-conscious about it. We don't guard ourselves like we do with boys. No one trains us to shield our hearts from each other. With girls, it's total vulnerability from the beginning. Our skin is bare and soft. We love with claws and teeth and the blood is just proof of how much. It's feral.

And it's relentless.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another....

One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object -- and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.”
― John Berger, Ways of Seeing

“If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.”
― Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

“Everything must be carried to term before it is born. To let every impression and the germ of every feeling come to completion inside, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, in what is unattainable to one’s own intellect, and to wait with deep humility and patience for the hour when a new clarity is delivered.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“One monk recorded the working of what he called the ‘noonday demon�� that struck between the hours of 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. At this time the monk was supposed to be working, but this particular demon would thwart him and make ‘it seem that the sun barely moves, if at all, and that the day is fifty hours long. Then he constrains the monk to look constantly out the windows, to walk outside the cell, to gaze carefully at the sun to determine how far it stands from the ninth hour�� �� the hour of dinner. The demon might then force the monk to poke his head out of his cell to see if any other brethren are about. Then, in the warmth of the noonday sun, the monk finds that he ‘rubs his eyes and stretches his hands, and he takes his eyes off his book and stares at the wall. Then he returns to the book and reads a little. As he unfolds it, he becomes preoccupied with the condition of the texts . . . he criticizes the orthography and the decoration. Finally, he folds the book up and places it under his head, and he falls into a light sleep.”
― Catherine Nixey, The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“To know nothing about yourself is to live. To know yourself badly is to think.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet