“I think Capote and Mieko — I don’t think either of them have any shame when it comes to going back to things, I think it’s about having a real fascination with rubbing a sore spot.”

— Sam Bett, in conversation with Joshua Ore for NYT

I wake up like a stray dog
belonging to no one.
Cold, cold, and the rain.
Friendships outgrown or ruined.
And love, dear God, the women
I have loved now only names
remembered: dead, lost, or old.
Mildness more and more the danger.

— Jack Gilbert.

But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.

— Margaret Atwood

“I’ve always preferred Cain.

His angry loneliness, his lack of his mother’s love, his Christian sarcasm: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” asks his brother’s murderer.

Aren’t we indeed the keepers of our dead?”

— Valzhyna Mort, Genesis

“An awful realization that I have been fooling myself all my life thinking there was a next thing to do to keep the show going and actually I'm just a sick clown and so is everybody else.”

— Jack Keruouac

by Franny Choi.

I need a father. I need a mother. I need some older, wiser being to cry to. I talk to God, but the sky is empty.

— Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals