“I suppose I had always hoped that, through an act of will and the effort of practice, I might be someone else, might alter my personality and even my appearance, that I might in fact create myself, but instead I found myself trapped in the very character which made such a thought possible and such a wish mine.”

— Lyn Hejinian, My Life

It struck me then, for the first time, how unethical anxiety is, how it voids the reality of other people by conscribing them as palliatives for you own fear.

— Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett

Consider relationships of dependence,” my sister suggests. “You don’t own your body - that’s not what we are, our bodies aren’t independent. The health of our bodies always depends on choices other people are making.” She falters for a moment here, and is at a loss for words, which is rare for her. “I don’t even know how to talk about this,” she says. “The point is there’s an illusion of independence.
— Eula Biss, On Immunity

"Apocalypse is now a long-running serial: not ‘Apocalypse Now’ but ‘Apocalypse From Now On.’ Apocalypse has become an event that is happening and not happening."

— Susan Sontag