If No One Ever Marries Me - Laurence Alma-Tadema

If no-one ever marries me—
And I don’t see why they should,
For nurse says I am not pretty
And I’m seldom very good—

If no one ever marries me
I shan’t mind very much;
I shall buy a squirrel in a cage,
And a little rabbit-hutch;

I shall have a cottage near a wood,
And a pony all my own,
And a little lamb, quite clean and tame,
That I can take to town;

And when I’m getting really old,
At twenty-eight or nine—
I shall buy a little orphan girl
And bring her up as mine.

"I have my books
And my poetry to protect me"

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."

"Stories you read when you’re the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you’ll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit."

Cesare Pavese - Ancestors

Stunned by the world, I reached an age
when I threw punches at air and cried to myself.
Listening to the speech of women and men,
not knowing how to respond, it’s not fun.
But this too has passed: I’m not alone anymore,
and if I still don’t know how to respond,
I don’t need to. Finding myself, I found company.

I learned that before I was born I had lived
in men who were steady and firm, lords of themselves,
and none could respond and all remained calm.
Two brothers-in-law opened a store—our family’s
first break. The outsider was serious,
scheming, ruthless, and mean—a woman.
The other one, ours, read novels at work,
which made people talk. When customers came,
they’d hear him say, in one or two words,
that no, there’s no sugar, Epsom salts no,
we’re all out of that. Later it happened
that this one lent a hand to the other, who’d gone broke.

Thinking of these folks makes me feel stronger
than looking in mirrors and sticking my chest out
or shaping my mouth into a humorless smile.
One of my grandfathers, ages ago,
was being cheated by one of his farmhands,
so he worked the vineyards himself, in the summer,
to make sure it was done right. That’s how
I’ve always lived too, always maintaining
a steady demeanor, and paying in cash.

And women don’t count in this family.
I mean that our women stay home
and bring us into the world and say nothing
and count for nothing and we don’t remember them.
Each of them adds something new to our blood,
but they kill themselves off in the process, while we,
renewed by them, are the ones to endure.
We’re full of vices and horrors and whims—

( a slightly different translation to the one I’m familiar with )