_All of This: A Memoir of Death and Desire_, by Rebecca Woolf

Initial takeaways. Obviously, a second reading is on the cards. 

'Nobody talks about what grief feels like when the person you're mourning is someone you had, for years, been prepared to lose a different way. That a relationship after someone is dead is no less complicated than a relationship with someone who is living.'

'I think many women are like me. We have been brainwashed to feel so ashamed of our truths that we lie in order to live. About who love and how. About the kind of love we want in return. We have been lying as a way to preserve ourselves since the beginning of time. So we can tell each other to be honest - woman to woman - what we are really saying is...it's okay. You can tell me your secrets. You can sharw with me how you stay sane. 

You can tell me how you lie.'

'When you're used to being treated a certain way, it is hard to know what is wrong and what isn't.'

'Even the most threatening man becomes almost infantile after sex. He becomes gentle, regardless of what it took to get him there.'

'I think of all of the times I faked orgasms to make men feel like they knew how to f*ck me. All the times I said yes but meant no. The times I slept with a man I felt sorry for, lending my body out like it was never mine to begin with. Like the way my grandmothers lent out their handkerchiefs when somebody sneezes in a room with no tissues.

Here. Take this. Just give it back to me when you're done.'

'Yeah, sex is cool, but have you ever conspired with your Lyft driver to plot an escape from her soul-sucking marriage at 2 a.m.  on the side of Olympic Blvd.?'

'This is what home feels like for me. Like revisiting a foreign country where you can now speak the language, I am back where I started, but this time I know how to communicate my needs. How to prioritize my pleasure. How to walk away from the kind of men who will never deserve my love and also the ones who do.'

'We day it's okay to die. It's ok to lose. It's okay to exist in one moment and then move forward into another one. An absorption of pulse. The crash of a heartbeat. Ephemeral love is also love.'

'...Am I a terrible person?'

'No,' she says. 'You are a person.'

'The long-term effects of thinking we can handle all the things we cannot are profound. A pale girl without protection cannot survive that much sun.'

'There is nothing more beautiful than a middle aged woman who isn't afraid to start over.'

'All it takes is two women to break one gaslight in the square. This is how rebellion starts.'

'why is it so hard for us to love one another the way we need to be loved?