transferring my commonplace book to tumblr...

Great Circle, Maggie Shipstead

At some point she would have found the edge of her own courage. There is nothing for it but to adjust, be humbled. So she is not exactly who she had thought. So what. She will be someone different.

Great Circle, Maggie Shipstead

My Year Abroad, Chang-Rae Lee

And although I can conjure her in various moments, those moments have steadily melded into one another to the point that the whole has become this mash, she's become a woman made of her woman-versions stacked in ghosted layers, this final misaligned image that flickers in and out, in and out, in a self-perpetuating cycle. I guess we each construct our own purgatory, so this must be mine.

If you think about it, most persons, including many of those who say they love you, can't help but question your particular coordinates in whatever you're doing or thinking or hoping for, then want to realign you to function more smoothly in their eyes and thereby calm their fretful souls.

My Year Abroad, Chang-Rae Lee

Nightbitch, Rachel Yoder

I made you, and I destroy you as well. I am your entire world, and then, also, I am the person you leave behind. I will always be with you. You will never understand me.

Was being free to do what you needed and be who you wanted -- truly free -- monstrous? If so, it was not a wrong kind of monstrous, but a beautiful one. A way of being to celebrate rather than run from.

How many generations of women had delayed their greatness only to have time extinguish it completely? How many women had run out of time while the men didn't know what to do with theirs? And what a mean trick to call such things holy or selfless. How evil to praise women for gibing up each and every dream.

How satisfying to summon the strength of her body, to feel her bones jar as her fist contacted the hard wall. Her had would bloody. Her knuckles would probably break. But the give of the wall, the crumble, the damage. There was a relief that could come with violence, she now saw.

No, the mother finally said. I think working mother is perhaps the most nonsensical concept ever concocted. I mean, who isn't a working mother? And then add a paid job to it, so what are you then? A working working mother? Imagine saying working father.

That single, white-hot light at the center of the darkness of herself -- that was the point of origin from which she birthed something new, from which all women do.

Nightbitch, Rachel Yoder

The Chosen and the Beautiful, Nghi Vo

Stars didn't talk like people did, and I couldn't listen with my ears, but when I closed my eyes, they appeared to throw moving pictures across the darkness.