ran

“Around the shadow is a heat of abundant sweat. I’m alive.»
«I'm alive. But I feel that I have yet to reach my limits, borders with what? without borders, the adventure of dangerous freedom. But I take risks, I live taking risks. I’m full of acacias swaying yellow, and I who have barely started my journey, I start it with a sense of tragedy, guessing toward which lost ocean my steps of life are leading. And madly I take control of the recesses of myself, my ravings suffocate me with so much beauty. I am before, I am almost, I am never. And all of this I won when I stopped loving you. I write to you as an exercise in sketching before painting. I see words.”
― Clarice Lispector, Água Viva

“Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

“Not for you,” Lila replies ardently, “you’re my brilliant friend, you have to be the best of all, boys and girls.”
― Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend

“First of all, I must make it clear that this girl does not know herself apart from the fact that she goes on living aimlessly. Were she foolish enough to ask herself 'Who am I?', she would fall flat on her face. For the question 'Who am I?' creates a need. And how does one satisfy that need? To probe oneself is to recognize that one is incomplete.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star