Julia

“And wasn't this what she'd been after--this lightness that came galloping through, grabbing you by the waist and hauling you along with it? How could you not surrender yourself to it, even if you knew you'd end up sitting bruised in the dirt? She supposed there must be another way to experience that breathless rush of being alive--something inward, perhaps?--but she didn't know what it was or how to get there on her own.”
― Sharon Guskin, The Forgetting Time

“They wanted a list of symptoms: dizziness, blurred vision, palpitations. You could not say, it is a different life trying to nudge this one aside. I am meant to be living that different life. Who would understand that, if she could make no better sense of understanding it herself?”
― Jean Thompson, She Poured Out Her Heart

“So much of desire, at that age, was a willful act. Trying so hard to slur the rough, disappointing edges of boys into the shape of someone we could love. We spoke of our desperate need for them with rote and familiar words, like we were reading lines from a play. Later I would see this: how impersonal and grasping our love was, pinging around the universe, hoping for a host to give form to our wishes.”
― Emma Cline, The Girls

“Have you always felt unseen, ignored, or unloved? Congratulations! You're the perfect prey for narcissists who feed off of blind worship and internal sadness. You'll never convince the target of your obsession that your love is what Sade was singing about on that one album. But oh, you will try. And in doing so, you will damage your self esteem. And then, once you wake up from the stupid spell you put on yourself, you can rail against those narcissists, but it won't affect them. So it's better just to skip ahead to the part where you admit that you're the one who bought the ticket to their show. Choose to want to figure out why you do these things and how to stop. In the end, it's all you can do.”
― Karen Kilgariff, Stay Sexy & Don't Get Murdered: The Definitive How-To Guide