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Bliss Montage

Book by Ling Ma · 12 quotes · Life, Self, Schedule

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All Life Self Schedule Work Actualization Aging America Americans Beauty Becoming Becoming Yourself Being Mothered Being Oneself Being Seen Being Yourself Calcification Care Choices Comfort Danger

Bliss Montage Quotes

“A woman sat alone at her dining table, reading and drinking a cocktail. It’d be such a relief to be older already, unburdened by the pressure to leverage your ever-fleeting beauty for whatever.”

Women Beauty Aging Getting Older Middle Aged Women Old Women

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Source: Bliss Montage

“All winter long, I had glimpsed his deeply set habits, his regimented schedule. When I left, he would eat a dinner of leftovers, then continue to work until sleep. Everything revolved, to a fault, around work, around his next book project. If I had lived alone, I would have turned out the same way. It is the thing I have been most afraid of happening, my strictness toward myself calcifying into a lifestyle, my traits ingrown so deeply that my oddness surfaces, apparent to all.”

Work Habits Working Schedule Oddness Regimentation Strictness Regimen

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“As her aunt stroked her forehead, she thought that, yes, finally she understood what a homecoming was supposed to be. It was to be comfortable in a way you couldn't be elsewhere. It was to be mothered into an oblivious ooze.”

Home Care Comfort Homecoming Being Mothered

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“Maybe you don't know that you're wounded until you receive the salve. The salve that makes everything come back.”

Pain Healing Trauma Wounds

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“It doesn’t take much to come into your own; all it takes is someone’s gaze. It’s not totally accurate to say that I felt seen. It was more that: Beheld by her, I learned how to become myself. Her interest actualized me.”

Self Becoming Self Understanding Actualization Being Seen Becoming Yourself Feeling Seen

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“Whatever I felt, whatever this feeling was inside of me, there is no place for it. There is no place for it to go, and I would have to carry it around inside of me for a long time, so long that it would fossilize and become a part of me.”

Life Self Feelings Internalizing

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Source: Bliss Montage

“In sex, in towel wringing, in dishwashing, as in everything else, he was exactly himself. If being exactly yourself meant you had to suffer the loneliness of being unlike anyone else, he seemed not to mind. The insularity of his lifestyle cradled him.”

Self Lifestyle Being Yourself Uniqueness Eccentricity Insularity Being Oneself

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“A boy, at best, can adore his mother, but a girl can understand her. When the doctor told me it was a girl, I thought, Now I will be understood.”

Motherhood Mothers

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“It was a time when the future could have been anything, been anywhere. It was so open that it could actually crush her.”

Life Time Danger Future Openness Wide Open

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“It doesn't take much to convince yourself that you're doing okay, just some discretionary income and a regularity to your days.”

Life Income Regularity Schedule Getting By Doing Ok Discretionary Income Regular Schedule

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“On the other side of graduation was her actual life, the slow narrowing of possibilities that would catch her and freeze her in a vocation, a relationship, a life. She intended to avoid that slow calcification for as long as possible—if only by refraining from making any crucial choices. In other words, she was moving back home.”

Life Jobs Choices Relationships Work Graduation Vocation Calcification Moving Back Home

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“On the TV, the newscaster kept referring to the imperialists, as translated in the closed captions. During her time here, she had learned that the term was virtually synonymous with Americans.”

America Imperialism Americans Imperialists

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Source: Bliss Montage