Jenny (Reading Envy)

“The old love was slowly metamorphosed into admiration, just as his physical longing for her (so bitter at first) turned into a consuming and depersonalized tenderness which fed upon her absence instead of dying from it.”
― Lawrence Durrell, Mountolive

“How many times have we tried to stand up fully only for them to tell us that we're being violent for just trying to be whole, that our attempted wholeness was hurting them? They've lied to us for such a long time. And I think when we've been taught to be afraid of ourselves in such ways, we absorb some of our teachers' fear.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir

“Those sorts of stories accumulated until they formed an archetype: the tragic yet resilient Iraqi woman, a metaphor for the country itself. In hindsight, it seems so facile to see Iraqi women only through the prism of their war-ravaged lives, but how else do you report a story where pain is etched on the face of every woman you interview?”
― Zahra Hankir, Our Women on the Ground: Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World

“All my life I have overheard, all my life I have listened to what people will let slip when they think you are part of their we. A we is so powerful. It is the most corrupt and formidable institution on earth. Its hands are full of the crispest and most persuasive currency. Its mouth is full of received, repeating language. The we closes its ranks to protect the space inside it, where the air is different. It does not protect people. It protects its own shape.”
― Patricia Lockwood, Priestdaddy