maísa

“In Senegal, the polite expression for saying someone died is to say his or her library has burned. When I first heard the phrase, I didn’t understand it, but over time I came to realize it was perfect. Our minds and souls contain volumes inscribed by our experiences and emotions; each individual’s consciousness is a collection of memories we’ve cataloged and stored inside us, a private library of a life lived.”
― Susan Orlean, The Library Book

“Poor people wait a lot. Welfare, unemployment lines, laundromats, phone booths, emergency rooms, jails, etc.”
― Lucia Berlin, A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

“I felt it. Felt everything. I knew I wanted to erase myself from the top down, like a drawing, and that still I wanted someone to touch my edges and tell me that they loved me despite them.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Case for Jamie

“The world just goes along. Nothing much matters, you know? I mean really matters. but then sometimes, just for a second, you get this grace, this belief that it does matter, a whole lot.”
― Lucia Berlin, A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories