Efemia

“Look at this existence. This pathetic, fallible, wonderful body,” you can say rhetorically, sarcastically, or earnestly and still achieve death. Look at me falling in love with fallible bodies. Look at me performing emotional labor”
― Gabby Bess, Alone with Other People

“Always he wanted to set her up to something, to give to her. And not only a sundae or some sweet to eat – but something real. That was all he wanted for himself – to give to her. Biff’s mouth hardened. He had done nothing wrong but in him he felt a strange guilt. Why? The dark guilt in all men, unreckoned and without a name.”
― Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

“I wouldn’t be a good wife, but I would be a wife in a way that was cinematically compelling.”
― Gabby Bess, Alone with Other People

“The eyes of his friend were moist and dark, and in them he saw the little rectangled pictures of himself that he had watched a thousand times.”
― Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter