A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough / without ever having felt sorry for itself. - Joan Didion

No one should ever be forced upon those in grief, and all over-emotional people, no matter how near or dear, should be barred absolutely. Although the knowledge that their friends love them and sorrow for them is a great solace, the nearest afflicted must be protected from any one or anything which is likely to overstrain nerves already at the threatening point, and none have the right to feel hurt if they are told they can neither be of use or be received. At such a time, to some people companionship is a comfort, others shrink from their dearest friends. T

Madness, it became convenient to believe quite early on, came with the territory, on the order of earthquakes.

All one's actual apprehension of what it is like to be a woman, the irreconcilable difference of it — that sense of living one's deepest life underwater, that dark involvement with blood and birth and death — could now be declared in valid, unnecessary, one never felt it at all.