"...the absence of words is the absence of intimacy."
Andrew Solomon, Far from the Tree
Anna Sale, Let's Talk About Hard Things
"The timing is never right..." If you're waiting for the window when you'll know just what to say and how to contain your family members' reactions, it will never happen. "It's about living in the discomfort and putting out there something that you know someone doesn't want to hear, because if you don't, it festers and it becomes a huge explosion and it's hard to contain."
Anna Sale, Let's Talk About Hard Things
"...a reminder to myself that nothing good ever came from time traveling."
Nora McInerny, It's Okay to Laugh (Crying Is Cool Too)
"There's nothing, and I mean nothing that tells a guy you are woman in demand like letting him know he is competing with your hairstylist for your time and attention."
Nora McInerny, It's Okay to Laugh (Crying Is Cool Too)
"I believe we have a sacred responsibility to live fully in the faces of our loses. It's a bitch, though."
Nora McInerny, It's Okay to Laugh (Crying Is Cool Too)
"Grief is weird, guys. Most books talk about it in nature terms, like it is a churning ocean, with waves and riptides and eddies that can pull you under. But mine is more like an expert stalker, adept at sneaking up on me undetected and strangling me from behind. He's too slick for most people even to notice, but he's there in the shadows, lurking at the edge of my happy Instagram photos, waiting to choke me out."
Nora McInerny, It's Okay to Laugh (Crying Is Cool Too)
"If you'd like to do something bold with your life, you will have to choose to do something bold on a specific day. There is no perfect day. There is no right time. For the trajectory to change, there has to be one day when you simply make the choice."
James Clear
"Life is what it is. My life today is wonderful. I believe that I am needed. That seems to me the most important sense of life, that you are needed, that you are not just an emptiness that breathes and walks and eats something."
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine
"...half the trouble and most of the violence of the world would be eliminated if men were forced to do their own ironing."
Donna Leon, The Girl of His Dreams
"Art is not an object, but a trigger for experience."
Brian Eno
"If I have one rule now about furnishing a house, it's this: My house must contain books - lots of books. The rest is negotiable."
Julia Ridley Smith, The Sum of Trifles
"As much as I dreaded that emptiness, I craved it, too. I hungered for all the dying to be over. I felt a pressing restlessness to be done."
Julia Ridley Smith, The Sum of Trifles
I was not regularly attending church, but I knew a smart, reasonable Episcopal priest, an acquaintance of my mother, When we sat down together, I told her I tended to rely on books to help me through my problems, and she found one I could borrow. But the book wasn't the real takeaway that day. Instead, it was something she said: "You're not going to die when your mother dies."
Julia Ridley Smith, The Sum of Trifles
"Social media has not diversified the conversation. The most vulnerable have become more vulnerable."
Maria Ressa, Nobel Peace Prize Winner 2021
"The Good Fight", Vogue, September 2022
"So many people who are heavily into computers are also into extreme sports and S&M. It's because their bodies are crying out for some kind of action."
Brian Eno