Paloma

“No, no, she wasn’t lost, she was even going to make a list of things she could do!
She sat with a blank page and wrote: eat — look at fruit in the market — see people’s faces — feel love — feel hate — have something not known and feel an unbearable suffering — wait impatiently for the beloved — sea — go into the sea — buy a new swimsuit — make coffee — look at objects — listen to music — holding hands — irritation — be right — not be right and give in to someone who is — be forgiven for the vanity of living — be a woman — do myself credit — laugh at the absurdity of my condition — have no choice — have a choice — fall asleep — but of bodily love I shall not speak.”
― Clarice Lispector, An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures

“I would like to grasp why it is that these two activities, falling in love and coming to know, make me feel genuinely alive. There is something like an electrification in them.”
― Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay

“Being beautiful, was that for men?'
'Yes. Some women say that it is for ourselves. What on earth can we do with it? I could have loved myself whether I was hunchbacked or lame, but to be loved by others, you had to be beautiful.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“And the tiger? No, neither people nor animals can say thank you for certain things. So she, the tiger, had paced languorously in front of the man, hesitated, licked one of her paws and then, since neither a word or a grunt was what mattered, gone off in silence. Lóri would never forget the help she’d received when she could only manage to stammer with fear.”
― Clarice Lispector, An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures