Holly

“But it isn't simple, being yourself. You have to know yourself physiologically and people don't want to believe the truth about themselves. They get some mental picture of themselves and then they devil the poor old body, trying to make it like the picture. When it won't obey--can't obey, of course--they are mad at it, and live in it as if it were an unsatisfactory house that they were hoping to move out of”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“My husband gave me a broom one Christmas. This wasn't right. No one call tell me it was meant kindly.”
― Grace Paley

“I felt that if I could only get to beauty, something speechless and formless would be absolved in me--if I could only get beyond my own hands lathered in soap, chapped from flour and coins, hands which did not touch or receive touch, hands sewing by a circle of lamplight. ...Of course I know now that beauty is relative. Now I can pine for the swallows nesting in the roof of the lavoir, the dry dirt and grass under my feet, the river's winding path. Even a newly mopped flagstone, butter melting on potatoes, a mended white cloth to shake out over a table and set with things gleaming sharp and bright.”
― Sophie Mackintosh, Cursed Bread

“It was not that she forgot the nature of her thoughts; it was rather that it had never occurred to her that thoughts "counted." In short, Mrs. Quest was like ninety-nine per cent of humanity: if she spent an afternoon jam-making, while her mind was filled with thoughts envious, spiteful, lustful--violent; then she had spent the afternoon making jam.”
― Doris Lessing, Landlocked