"It happens so seldom; I must catch and keep this slender yearning, a rare beetle in a jam-jar trap. But mustering will is not the same as wanting. I lie in the garden and think about all the footsteps..."
- Sara Baume
"And yet, here I am. Perceiving everything that is wonderful to be proportionately difficult; everything that is possible an elaborate battle to achieve. My happy life was never enough for me. I always..."
"My mother says: 'People who suffer from anxiety are usually those with the most vivid imaginations."
"See how community is only a good thing when you're a part of it."
"It’s time to accept that I am average, and to stop making this acceptance of my averageness into a bereavement."
"And I felt like such a failure. I thought: I can't even do mental illness properly."
"But no, now I see I never meant to Ben what Ben meant to me. If there was anything I said which resonated in return, he found a better speech elsewhere. My romance went no further than his coat."
"People don't like it when you say real things."
"Why is it only now that I can see how many ordinary things are actually grotesque?"
"I look at the cake in my mother's arms and think: here stands the only person in the whole world who'd go to such trouble for fractious, ungrateful me."