Thomas

“He does not move his hand, and as he works himself in me he says, “I love you, I love you, I love you.” I do not know if I am the first woman to walk up the aisle of St. George’s with semen leaking down her leg, but I like to imagine that I am.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties

“A little girl of ten or eleven, hair in an unraveling braid. It is Mara, old enough to walk, old enough to speak. Old enough to be bullied and then to face the bullies down. Old enough to ask questions without answers and have problems without solutions.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties

“Around us, minutes inch over the dirt like ants, tumble into the swollen stream, are carried away.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties

“I watched him walking away, sweater over his shoulders, bag in hand, until he was no more than a tiny point in the distance. I watched, without so much as blinking, and I realized how utterly lonely I was. But all my staring couldn’t prevent that distant point from vanishing like a snowflake dissolving in the sunlight.”
― Yōko Ogawa, The Diving Pool: Three Novellas