LIFE COMES AT THEM FROM ALL SIDES

"For a long time I wandered aimlessly. It felt like a long time. It didn't feel aimless, however, or not in any carefree way. I was being driven by nessecity, by fate, like the characters in the more melodramatic novels I'd read in high school who would rush out into thunderstorms and lurk around moors. Like them I had to keep moving. I couldn't help it."

"I couldn't keep up my transient existence forever. I would have to end up with someone, sometime, someplace. Wouldn't I? But what if I missed a turn somewhere - missed my own future? That would be frighteningly easy to do. I'd make one hesitation or one departure too many and then I'd have run out of choices; I'd be standing all alone (...)"

"Why should being alone - in and of itself - be such a matter of derision? But it was. The alone - the loners - were not to be trusted. They were strange and twisted (...) They didn't love anyone, and nobody loved them. In my more rebellious moments I asked myself why I should care about being shut out of Noah's Ark of coupledom - in effect a glorified zoo, with locks on the bars and fodder dished out at set intervals."

"But I wasn't without social resources. I didn't take off my clothes and sing in public: I acted in acceptable ways. I smiled, nodded, made conversation, and so forth. I could do a good imitation of a competent young woman."

"She said nothing. She was spoiling things; she didn't want to. She'd been put in a false situation, and she hated that. But she had no other word to suggest - no word for herself that would be both truthful and acceptable."

"He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her neck, but she could tell that he was annoyed nonetheless. She was making difficulties where none existed. She was overstepping a line. But where was the line? She couldn't see it."

"My mother is in the middle. The names are written underneath: Jessie, Helene, "Me", Katie, Dorothy (...) In those early years of her photo-pasting, she always refers to herself as "Me", with quotation marks around the word, as if she's citing some written opinion to the effect that she is who she is."

"That was all quite long ago. I see it in retrospect, indulgently, from the point I've reached now. But how else could I see it? We can't really travel to the past, no matter how we try. If we do, it's as tourists."
- Moral disorder, Margaret Atwood

JAG ÄR EN LEDSEN MÄNNISKA MEN JAG ÄR GLAD ATT JAG LEVER

"Jag är min egen grupp och det är good enough for me."
"Jag bränner encyklopedin utan att slå upp ordet universitet."

Bought tickets to "Enligt Bodil Malmsten" today. I'm beyond excited, but since I don't wanna fangirl too much, I'll just put up Eldkvarn's "Blues för Bodil Malmsten" and the last episode of Skavlan which she's in;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWULFwbW_Lg
http://svtplay.se/t/102974/skavlan

And the blog, obviously. One cannot forget about the blog; http://www.finistere.se/blogg/

WHEN I WAS IN SCHOOL, I CUT CLASSES. IN ADULTHOOD, I CUT CORNERS

"I live on drama. I'm so used to being unhappy; I'd rather stay there than try to make things better. What things? I don't know. Sadness is a feeling I know. It has no strings attached. Happiness, it always comes with risks."
- The creativity of the mess we make, Julia Melin

"You left school at 14 and never went to university. Do you think this unusual path has been a help to your creativity?"

"Yes, it has been vey good for me on the whole (...) I know many writers who have been circumscribed by academia. When you're always being taught to compare, it does stop your creativity (...) I would never have survived a creative writing course! They savaged each other, and what they were creating were critics, not writers. I'm prepared to bet on that."

- Doris Lessing