Death is a strange thing. We fear it, yet most of us fear more than anything that it may take someone other than ourselves. For the greatest fear of death is always that it will pass us by. And leave us there alone 👴🏼🐈🚙

We all want everything to be okay. We don‘t even wish so much for fantastic or marvelous or outstanding. We will happily settle for okay, because most of the time, okay is enough 👦🏻👩🏾‍🦱👩🏼🧑🏽👩🏼‍🦰👨🏿‍🦱

Patience meant you had to honor the moments before they happened the same way you honored the moments when they did ⏳

I‘m going to let you in on a little secret about life. You think it‘s boring now? Well, it only gets more boring. The sooner you learn it‘s on you to make life interesting, the better off you‘ll be🐧🚢📮

I looked around for the five dollars. I thought I had been holding it the whole time, but it was gone. I thought of the five dollars sheltering in a hidden root tent, shuddering in the wind alone like that. It made me cry. I cried to think of anything being alone, even if it could not draw a breath 🥺

All you had to do was pull a book from the shelf and open it and suddenly the darkness was not so dark anymore 📖🎃

To find people beyond your people was nothing short of miraculous, finding a person away from home who felt like home and shifted, subsequently, the very notion of home, widening its borders🏡💛

I knew there would be something else, but it was always after. After, after. It was like I was waiting for something to start, and I was actually in the middle of it the whole time ⚾️🦞🌼

Beauty alters the grain of reality 🖼

There were days—she could remember this—when Henry would hold her hand as they walked home, middle-aged people, in their prime. Had they known at these moments to be quietly joyful? Most likely not. People mostly did not know enough when they were living life that they were living it 👵🏼👴🏻💛

Grief at its peak has a terrible beauty to it, a blinding fission of every emotion💔🎈

Everyone looked better from a distance 👣❄️🏔

You shouldn‘t be afraid of the future...there was always going to be an after ⛷💃🏼🍷

Why had I thought that the way things appeared—or even the way people said they were—had any relationship to reality? 📃🐚📚

It so frequently takes tragedy or catastrophe for people to come together and be united, for us to truly stop what we‘re doing and devote ourselves to one another. In misfortune we rediscover each other and become aware of what it means to be a human among other humans. In sorrow, we need each other more than ever 👟🚲🔪

She thought of books as medication and sanctuary and the source of all good things. Nothing yet had proven her wrong 📚🤓🐈

Life will change and change again. You just have to find a port in this storm. It doesn‘t have to be another person. Find something just for you 🤸🏻‍♀️🎸🎶

He say readin‘ ought to be something folk do ‘cause they enjoy it. Not ‘cause they scared of what might happen to ‘em if they can‘t 📖🥃🍏

Unfortunately, you don‘t get to choose the circumstances. That‘s the point of luck: it happens when and where it happens 🌺🏖

Don‘t spend your life waiting for perfect moments 🙌🏻

We hold hands and pretend at forgetting 🌾

Rare & Recent Books: The Bookshop
Cong, Ireland 🇮🇪☘️

There‘s plenty he‘s done to be ashamed of. And there were so many ways that his plan could have gone wrong. So many ways. When I think of them, I‘m so scared that I can‘t breathe. But then I remember why he did this - so that I could be here 🏢💉❄️🇷🇺

It‘s harder than I thought anything could be and I‘m so tired. I need someone to give me the chance. I hate that. Why can‘t I choose, instead of wanting to be chosen? 🧳✈️🚌

Finding a man, keeping a man, choosing one man over another. Honestly, why does it always come back to men? 📑⚖️💄💋

I wanted to have this baby for all the reason reasons people want to have babies: to carry around a warm bundle with a brand-new face; to witness the dawning of all kinds of consciousness; to laugh more; to learn things I‘d forgotten; to celebrate birthdays instead of lamenting them; to not miss out on the meaning of life 👶🏻🍼🧸🎀

That‘s the thing, you see. Some people, given just the right amount of pressure, taken out of their usual, comfortable environments, don‘t need much encouragement at all to become monsters 🌨🦌😈

They‘d both learned that a memory is a fact that‘s been dyed and trimmed and rinsed so many times that it comes out looking almost unrecognizable to anyone else who was in that room, anyone else who was standing on the grass beneath that telephone pole 💭👨🏻‍✈️☘️

For as it turns out, one can revisit the past quite pleasantly, as long as one does so expecting nearly every aspect of it to have changed 🕰🗝🏨

He felt the old beat of pleasure inside his body, like watching a perfect goal, like the rustling movement of light through leaves, a phrase of music from the window of a passing car. Life offers up these moments of joy despite everything 🍃🌻

But the only reason people thought I had everything is because I had all the things you can see. I had none of the things you can‘t 🎸🎶🖤

It is about real love, true love. Imperfect, wretched, weak love. No fairy tales, no poetry. It is about the negotiations we undertake with ourselves in the name of love. Every day we struggle to decide what to give away and what to keep, but every day we make that calculation and we live with the results 💚

Girls are complicated. They rarely love each other without also hating each other. They often react to differences of situation with envy even if the difference, the thing their girlfriend has that they don‘t, is a thing they never wanted in the first place 🎭

There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom 🥕🌷🍓🥬🍅🌻

Nothing imprints the brain more effectively than fear. Certain details from life-or-death events stay with us for the rest of our lives, like scars in our consciousness ✈️🚗🔥🌪

There was something unspoken, she thought, a kind of proprietary confidence and ease that parents and children seemed to carry with them. The way these four people could make this room home in a matter of minutes, claiming the space and settling in, so self-contained that the world outside seemed unnecessary
🃏🍺🚬

I know how painful it can be letting someone you think you love go, but I don‘t believe there‘s only one person in the world for each of us. It‘s too fanciful, too limiting. There comes a point where you have to make the choice to be happy, because being sad for too long is exhausting. And one day, you‘ll look back, and you‘ll not be able to remember exactly what it was you loved about that person❄️🚌

I won‘t give up on you again, she thought, and felt this promise like a tear in her heart ⭐️💔

And no one, no matter how smart or experienced, could expect to look at a tiny baby and know exactly who or what she would grow up to be 👶🏻

I don‘t really want to be cheered up, she said. I just...can you stand in the darkness with me? 🖤

The things that could have happened but did not are just as crucial to a life as all the things that do 😴

I mustn‘t put strangeness where there‘s nothing. I think that is the danger of keeping a diary: you exaggerate everything, you are on the lookout, and you continually stretch the truth 📖🤐

You must remember, this is what a writer does. Uses his or her imagination. Tries to understand how it feels to be alive in a moment that never existed with a person who never lived, saying words that were never spoken aloud 📖✍🏻

The landscape of memory was like that. Sometimes the near seemed far, far away and the faraway was right beneath your feet 🍿🎟🧠

Why was it that everyone‘s life looked easier from a distance? 🥃💊💍

This is the thing about America. You can never guess who‘s going to turn out to be a nice person 🚌🗺

How can I ever thank you, Ben, for helping me the way you did?
You my family, Abinia, he replied
My throat was so tight I could scarcely reply. As you are mine, I said 🧡

He was reaching that age, when the world becomes suddenly more beautiful, when it reveals itself in a special way...the world was opening itself, as if to allow, now that life was shortening, one long, passionate look, and all that had been withheld would finally be given 🌿🦋

There are so many different kinds of quiet, and only one word for them. The quiet in the house has matured from quiet as lack of noise to something else, a textured, grainy quiet, a thickness to stumble through 🌊

Her heart is like a bird caught in a house - she can‘t even catch the poor thing to calm it down and set it free 🕊