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

"In my worst pain, I can remember thinking, “This is not beautiful.” I can remember being disgusted by the very idea.

But in my worst pain, I also found myself secretly cherishing the phrase, “This too shall pass.” The longer the pain lasted, the more beautiful and impossible and absolutely holy this phrase became."

— “The Pain Scale” by Eula Biss

“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