₍ᐢ. .ᐢ₎

“every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own soul.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Someone speak to me. Call out to me and take me out. Please, please, I'm begging you, say something kind to me.
Tell me I'm pretty, tell me I'm sweet.
Invite me out for coffee, or more...
Tell me that you want to spend the day with me and me alone.”
― Natsuo Kirino, Grotesque

“In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be.”
― Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays

“Can you love my brain even when it is small? When it is malevolent? When it is violent? Can you love it even when it does not love me?”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether