"He has other lovers. I mean nothing to him.

She's badly shaken by her behavior. Nothing in her life has prepared her for it. Standing on the redwood deck overlooking the beach, the ocean, staring into the distance where she'd first seen Jean-Claude emerge limping out of the mist. At her feet there's something moving; she gives a little cry and moves away. A small sand crab? A large hard-shelled beetle? Ceci runs to investigate. 'Oh, Mommy. He's hurt.'"

Hunger by Joyce Carol Oates in Female of the Species (2005)

"When man is happy, the meaning of life and other eternal themes rarely interest him." - Snaut


from Solaris by Andrei Tarkovsky (1972)

Once I heard girls singing a May Day song that went:


Violante in the pantry
Gnawing at a mutton bone
How she gnawed it
How she clawed it
When she felt herself alone.


Girls are cruelest to themselves.

from The Glass Essay by Anne Carson (1994)