Curry

“There are things that cut through swathes of memory, there are things you take with you that are non-essential, that drag you down, but you can't offload them because there is only one way to throw them overboard and that is for you to walk the plank.”
― Amanda Lee Koe, Ministry of Moral Panic

“It is the phenomenon somethings called "alienation from self." In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of the question. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves - there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.”
― Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

“When one gender is so unwanted, so despised, and so suppressed in a place where daughters are expressly unwanted, perhaps both the body and the mind of a growing human can be expected to revolt against becoming a woman. And thus, perhaps, alter someone for good.”
― Jenny Nordberg, The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan

“No group can be truly suppressed until its members are trained and convinced to suppress one another.”
― Jenny Nordberg, The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan