I had not asked to be rescued, true, but that did not mean I didn’t need saving.
The thing about a mom is that she’s always there. She’s the one who rubs your back when you have the flu, who manages to notice you have no clean underwear and does your wash for you, who stocks the refrigerator with all the foods you love without having to ask. The thing about a mom is that you never imagine taking care of her, instead of the other way around.
Violence, from one angle, looked like mercy from another.
I tell them that there is nothing more selfish than trying to change someone’s mind because they don’t think like you. Just because something is different does not mean it should not be respected.
A mother has nine months to get used to sharing the space where her heart is; for a father it comes on sudden, like a storm that changes the landscape forever.
My whole life, this is how I’ve defined the paranormal: can’t understand it, can’t explain it, can’t deny it.
I learned a lot that night. For example, that part of being the magician’s assistant means coming face-to-face with illusion. That invisibility is really just knotting your body in a certain way and letting the black curtain fall over you. That people don’t vanish into thin air; that when you can’t find someone, it’s because you’ve been misdirected to look elsewhere.
And naturally she wanted to believe she would have been a hero, when push came to shove. But you never knew what path you’d take until you got to that crossroads.
When they laugh, it sounds like confetti.
When it comes to social justice, the role of the white ally is not to be a savior or a fixer. Instead, the role of the ally is to find other white people and talk to make them see that many of the benefits they’ve enjoyed in life are direct results of the fact that someone else did not have the same benefits. I.
If we are meant to only have children who never encounter difficulty in life, then no one should be born.
Corinne is one of those people for whom life is just the space between crises.
Death is the guest you didn’t invite: arriving when you least expect it, least need it and when you least want it.
It’s not my fault that my awesomeness intimidates people.
The whole point of this examination is to make me feel lesser than... but I have spent 20 years seeing how beautiful women are. Not because of how they look, but because of what their bodies can withstand.
Children are the anchors of a mother’s life. – SOPHOCLES, Phaedra, fragment 612.
In the real world, you can’t just turn a page and feel better.
In psychoanalytical theory there is a phenomenon called transference. The therapist becomes a blank screen, onto which the patient projects some incident or feeling that began in childhood... it would not be a far reach for someone to look at my feelings for Jess and assume that, in the context of our relationship as tutor and pupil, I am not in love. I’m just in transference.
Reality is frigid; I have to dip one toe at a time and grow accustomed to the shock before wading in further.
She falters, then gather up the weeds of her thoughts and offers me the saddest, truest bouquet.