In Olga‘s heart there was a pin-sized hole of infinite depth that made every day slightly more painful than it needed to be. She thought of it, this hole, as a birth defect. The space where, in a normal heart, a mother‘s love was meant to be.

We did that often, asking each other questions whose answers we already knew. Perhaps it was so that we would not ask the other questions, the ones whose answers we did not want to know.

Some people, weak people, fear solitude. What they fail to understand is that there‘s something very liberating about it; once you realize that you don‘t need anyone, you can take care of yourself. That‘s the thing: it‘s best just to take care of yourself.

Don't sit around and wait for the perfect opportunity to come along—find something and make it an opportunity.

Mozasu and his men tinkered with the machines to fix the outcomes—there could only be a few winners and a lot of losers. And yet we played on, because we had hope that we might be the lucky ones. How could you get angry at the ones who wanted to be in the game? Etsuko had failed in this important way—she had not taught her children...to believe in the perhaps-absurd possibility that they might win. Pachinko was a foolish game, but life was not.

Hillbillies learn from an early age to deal with uncomfortable truths by avoiding them, or by pretending better truths exist. This tendency might make for psychological resilience, but it also makes it hard for Appalachians to look at themselves honestly. We tend to overstate and to understate, to glorify the good and ignore the bad in ourselves.

Every moment in a woman‘s life was a deal, a deal for her body: first for its blooming and then for its wilting; first for her bleeding and then for her virginity and then for her bearing (counting only the sons) and then for her windowing.

Don't save your best for when you think the material calls for it. Always bring your full potential to every take, and be on top of your job, or they will replace you.

The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting. For some, it's a Broadway spotlight; for others, a lamplit desk. Use your natural powers -- of persistence, concentration, and insight -- to do work you love and work that matters. Solve problems. make art, think deeply.

You spent nearly four years on the border, she said. You weren‘t just observing a reality, you were participating in it. You can‘t exist within a system for that long without being implicated, without absorbing its poison. And let me tell you, it isn‘t something that‘s just going to slowly go away. It‘s part of who you‘ve become. So what will you do? All you can do is try to find a place to hold it, a way to not lose some purpose for it all.

In white culture, forgiveness is synonymous with letting go. In my culture, I believe we carry pain until we can reconcile with it through ceremony. Pain is not framed like a problem with a solution. I don‘t even know that white people see transcendence the way we do. I‘m not sure that their dichotomies apply to me.

Love makes a place in your life, it makes a place for itself in your bed. Invisibly, it makes a place in your body, rerouting all your blood vessels, throbbing right alongside your heart. When it's gone, nothing is whole again.

This was an awesome audiobook to listen to! Tiffany is hilarious, strong, and positive despite everything she has been through. I fell in love with her personality! Watch her in Girls Trip if you haven‘t done so already :)

In some ways, I think that part of what of what I'm trying to accomplish, whether Amá really understands it or not, is to live for her Apá, and Olga. It's not that I'm living life for them, exactly, but I have so many choices they've never had. And I feel like I can do so much with what I've been given. What a waste their journey would be if I just settled for a dull mediocre life.

When we deny our stories and disengage from tough emotions, they don‘t go away; instead, they own us, they define us. Our job is not to deny the story, but to defy the ending—to rise strong, recognize our story, and rumble with the truth until we get to a place where we think, Yes. This is what happened. This is my truth. And I will choose how this story ends.

You have been taught that you are unclean, that you are not holy, that your body is impure and could never harbour the divine. You have been taught to despise everything you are and to long only to be a man. But you have been taught lies.

An America that asks what it owes its most vulnerable citizens is improved and humane. An America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future.

When I wasn‘t accepted to any graduate school program to study invertebrate biomechanics, I had to reckon with the twin pressures that mold so many of our lives: passion and economics. Passion pushes our curiosity, drives innovation, and breaks through boundaries. Economics makes rules, sets boundaries, and forces compromise.

Each time you make a good decision or do something nice or take care of yourself; each time you show up to work and work hard and do your best at everything you can do, you‘re planting seeds for a life that you can only hope will grow beyond your wildest dreams. Take care of the little things—even the little things that you hate—and treat them as promises to your own future. Soon you‘ll see that fortune favors the bold who get shit done.

It is those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely to be given the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success. It‘s the rich who get the biggest tax breaks. It‘s the best students who get the best teaching and most attention. And it‘s the biggest nine- and ten-year-olds who get the most coaching and practice. Success is the result of what sociologists like to call “accumulative advantage.

What imperfect carriers of love we are, and what imperfect givers. That the reasons we can care for one another can have nothing to do with the person cared for. That it has only to do with who we were around that person—what we felt about that person.

Growing up out here in the country taught me things. Taught me that after the first fat flush of life, time eats away at things: it rusts machinery, it matures animals to become hairless and featherless, and it withers plants [...] since Mama got sick, I learned pain can do that too. Can eat a person until there‘s nothing but bone and skin and a thin layer of blood left. How it can eat your insides and swell you in wrong ways.

That's the problem. We let people say stuff, and they say it so much that it becomes okay to them and normal for us. What's the point of having a voice if you're gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn't be?

Acting is communication, not only person to person, but soul to soul-a physical, emotional, and certainly spiritual expression.

I enjoyed listening to fast-talking “Lorelai” describe what it was like filming Gilmore Girls, both old and new. However, it felt empty somehow. She kept it very light and fluffy, didn‘t dive into anything really deeply. Still, it was nice to have her talk to me for 4.5 hours as I commuted to and from work.

All her life, she had learned that passion, like fire, was a dangerous thing. It so easily went out of control. It scaled walls and jumped over trenches. Sparks lept like fleas and spread as rapidly; a breeze could carry embers for miles. Better to control that spark and pass it carefully from one generation to the next, like an Olympic torch... to tend it carefully like an eternal flame...Carefully controlled. Domesticated. Happy in captivity.

True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness. True belonging doesn‘t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.

A beautifully written story about two sisters and their struggles to survive WWII in France. I thought my heart wouldn‘t make it through some parts, but it was well worth the heartbreak.

You should always be prepared to defend your choices, whether just to yourself (sometimes this is the hardest) or to your coworkers, your friends, or your family. The quickest way for people to lose confidence in your ability to ever make a decision is for you to pass the buck, shrug your shoulders, or otherwise wuss out. Learning how to become a decision maker, and how you ultimately justify your choices, can define who you are.

I wanted to let the world know that no one had a perfect life, that even the people who seemed to have it all had their secrets.

It‘s up to us to make the choice to be grateful even when things aren‘t going well. Nouwen calls that the “discipline of gratitude”. To me, it means not just being grateful for the good things, because that‘s easy, but also to be grateful for the hard things too. To be grateful even for our flaws, because in the end, they make us stronger by giving us a chance to reach beyond our grasp.

Feels like the right time to finally dive into this book 🍂🎃☠️

It only had to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles for no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way.

We do not simply live in this universe. The universe lives within us.

This was such a great listen; witty, fun, and heartfelt. I laughed, I cried, I basked in the passion and love that NPH has for his family, work, and life in general. I highly recommend listening to this on audio!

The harshest criticism, I noticed, often seemed to come from other women. I didn't want to be that kind of woman, I decided; it wasn't right to hurt others in a way I'd been hurt. From then on, I vowed, I would never say anything negative about a woman's appearance. It had nothing to do with them as a person, and it wasn't something they could easily change. If I didn't want looks to matter, I would have to stop talking and acting like they did.

On a bit of a graphic novel kick at the moment. Excited to sink into all of these 🤗📚

Listening to this book was an emotional roller coaster. Amy Schumer is definitely hilarious. But, she dove into the difficulties she's faced in her life like her father being diagnosed with MS, her abusive relationship, & being affected by gun violence. I found myself laughing for a couple of chapters and then suddenly fighting back tears in the next. I was pleasantly surprised by this book & look forward to following Schumer's career a bit more.

We don‘t necessarily know how to hear stories about any kind of violence, because it is hard to accept that violence is as simple as it is complicated, that you can love someone who hurts you, that you can stay with someone who hurts you, that you can be hurt by someone who loves you, that you can be hurt by a complete stranger, that you can be hurt in so many terrible, intimate ways.

Because caring was a thing with claws. It sank them in, and didn't let go. Caring hurt more than a knife to the leg, more than a few broken ribs, more than anything that bled or broke and healed again. Caring didn't break you clean. It was a bone that didn't set, a cut that wouldn't close.

But you can't find love if you're not willing to lose it. You can't find happiness if you're not willing to risk being sad. And you can't find the love of your life without risking breaking your heart.

I say no to misogynists who want to weaponize my body against me. I say no to men who feel entitled to my attention and reverence, who treat everything the light touches as a resource for them to burn. I say no to religious zealots who insist that I am less important than an embryo. I say no to my own instinct to stay quiet. It's a way of kicking down the boundaries that society has set up for women...

What a fun listen! Anna Kendrick was witty, awkward, and a great companion for my commute to/from work.

I'm glad I finally got around to reading this book. I enjoyed delving into the history and ethics of medical research, but the gem of this book is in learning about the lives of the Lacks family. Great read!

I'm reading along as I listen to the audiobook. Simply because I love feeling like Lilly is talking to me and giving me life advice. I'm so thankful that I got to meet her & get a signed copy 🙌🏽

The temperature has dropped 20 degrees in the last hour & a half, so I'm settling in for the night with a delicious cup of tea and a lovely book ☕️🌬

I loved Kate Winslet's narration of this book! I missed my exit on my commute home today because I was so into the story. That was a first for me.

This is the first horror/thriller I've read in years and it's made me want to read more. I could not put the book down & enjoyed the pace of the story. I was also intrigued by the parenting struggles highlighted throughout. Great read!

Doing a bit of reading for work 👓