☁️ unattainable bliss 🦴

“it’s just that when isobel says things, laura believes them, and when virginia says things laura believes them, too; it’s just that laura knows she is so soft, soft enough that anyone can shape her, and she knows enough to know this softness makes her weak.”

"van helsing was the kind of man who looked at wild things like they existed to be conquered, as if conquering them somehow made him more of a man. the kind of man who was content to murder the monsters, and let live the man who'd made them. which would only ever create more monsters."

"it was economics that europe should invest in africa and control the continent's raw materials and labour. it was racism which confirmed the decision that form of control should be direct colonial rule."

"it's not that i want to go back to my old life. but this new one is wrong, even though it's trying to pull me into its dark embrace with its silk and shadows, knives and blood"

"there were never strawberries/like the ones we had/that sultry afternoon, and she understood for the first time the past tense of it, the longing for what is passed. the fumbling for something that is gone and cannot come again"

"all i've ever tried to do is the right thing. if that's so very different from how things have been done before, then what's done before was wrong."

"he and eli were bonded, by blood and death and science. they were alike, more so now than ever. and he had missed eli. he wanted to see him. and he wanted to see him suffer. he wanted to see the look in eli’s eyes when he lit them up with pain. he wanted his attention. eli was like a thorn beneath victor’s skin, and it hurt."

"the past doesn’t exist… it’s a story we tell ourselves."

"it felt like a gift, this thing that lay between zer favorite brawny barkeep and zer lovely sadist shipmate. ze would unwrap it slowly and delicately, since neither of them seemed to have much sense of humor about the other. that was fine; kilo had enough sense of humor for all three of them."

spring photo dump 🌸

"only rich white men would throw a party at the end of the world"

"you boiled her down to one thing, like that's all she's ever been, but cab has a whole universe inside."

"it was why they tormented each other mercilessly, desperate to find ways to somehow, despite everything, still feel alive."

"politics is a form of selective amnesia. the people who survive it are our only insurance against forgetting."

"we were made to be something, not given the opportunity to step into something that we were meant to be."

"it was the most important night of my life, he said calmly. it enabled me to do what i've always wanted most. which is? to live without thinking."

"she’s made of every bad thing that has happened to her, just like she’s made of every good thing. she’s made of every good thing before the woods and every good thing she found in its unyielding grip."