Olivia (Stories For Coffee)

“Life is not a zero-sum game. There are people who just have bad luck, who lose everything they love, little by little.”
― Benedict Wells, Vom Ende der Einsamkeit

“Fuck being cool and fuck being chill. If the reward for being the coolest girl in the room is a sliver of attention from the world’s most mediocre men then i would happily commit to never being cool and never being chill.”
― Drew Afualo, Loud: Accept Nothing Less Than the Life You Deserve

“I believe that evil is directly proportional to idiocy. I believe that the territory you roamed in anguish before you disappeared is ruled by idiots. It isn’t true that criminals are masterminds. It takes a vast amount of stupidity to assemble the parts of such grotesque, absurd, and cruel machinery. Pure brutality disguised as a masterplan. Small people, with small minds, who don’t understand the abyss of the other. They lack the language or tools for it. Empathy and compassion require a clear mind. Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, changing your skin, adopting a new face: these are all acts of genuine intelligence.”
― Nona Fernández, The Twilight Zone

“The gown rustles and slides around her, speaking a glossolalia all of its own, the silk moving against the rougher nap of the underskirts, the bone supports of the bodice straining and squealing against their coverings, the cuffs scuffing and chafing the skin of her wrists, the stiffened collar hooking and nibbling at her nape, the hip supports creaking like the rigging of a ship. It is a symphony, an orchestra of fabrics, and Lucrezia would like to cover her ears, but she cannot.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait