What goes better with the death of the heart than consolation cookies?
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What goes better with the death of the heart than consolation cookies?
pickI can't review it better than Anne Lamott did.
"It's not that ignorance has been bliss for you, really, but it's been okay. It's been a low-fat pound cake, not entirely satisfying but better than bread and water." P 14
"Her desire to get the most out of life grew greater as her future shrank, and part of that enthusiasm was the vague hope of having someone to cherish, even if this clashed with the reality of a lack of opportunities. She missed sex, romance, and love. The first of these she could obtain every so often, the second was a matter of luck, and the third was a gift from the gods that would probably never happen." P9
"You'd quickly run out of people if you had to disqualify all those who at some point have been shits. She thinks this will have to be the moral of this story." P315
"I understood early that love was a mission to heal one's own heart. We are attracted to the people who can open our wounds." P121
"Sometimes I worry that I'm self-obsessed, and then I worry that I'm thinking about myself too much." P. 130
"So many people, even now, admire privation. They think it sharpens you, the way beauty does, into something that might hurt them. They calculate their own strengths against, unconsciously, preparing to pity you or fight." P. 157
"Mixed in with all of its silly bullshit, Facebook is the literal manifestation of all of our regrets, looping and looping, for free, on our computers and phones. People who should be gone and safely out of our lives forever are there again, one cryptic little glimpse at a time, reminding us of all the things we should or shouldn't have done." P 177
"I will stay here, I think, I will pull up the anchor and lie in the hull of the boat and let it take me to wherever the centre is.
I walk down the corridor of my brain and don't even look at the doors on either side." P 92
"The motivating force of almost every single classic eighties teen film was not, in fact, selling soundtracks... It was social class." P143
pickReading this book will help you fall in love with Blacksburg, VA all over again! If you're not in Blacksburg, you will still learn multiple approaches to exploring your community and developing ties. Warnick includes helpful checklists for ways to immerse yourself in your current zip code and invest in your surroundings. After all, wherever you go, there you are. Might as well be happy. #ThisIsHome
"Grace is the unexpected glimmering that happens, so subtly that no one else might notice..." P 27
"The past was a bridge that looked solid and sturdy, but once you were on it, you saw that it extended only far enough to strand you, to suspend you between loss and longing with nowhere to go at all." P.211
"This was going to be the best year of my life, a Technicolor romp after so many dunnish slogs." P 75
"...love, one-way deep adoration that bounced off and did not bounce back; careful, quiet love that didn't care and went on anyway." P 211
"Just as Sisyphus was sentenced to pushing a rock uphill, we are sentenced to write a life story - moment to moment, day after day, from beginning to the end, even as we struggle through inevitable stretches of tedium and suffering." P 229
"Happiness, as it exists in the world - as opposed to those artificially constructed moments like weddings and birthday parties, where it's gathered into careful piles - is not smooth. Happiness in the real world is mostly just resilience and a willingness to arch oneself toward optimism." P 205
"And the sadder truth was that possession blunted desire, while the unattainable lover shimmered at the edge of the mind like a brilliant star, festered in the heart like a crystal shard." P 219
"The only brooms that played a role in the witch hunt were wielded afterward by men, to sweep the year under the carpet." P 363
"So much of desire, at that age, was a willful act. Trying so hard to slur the rough, disappointing edges of boys into the shape of someone we could love." P47
"Searching out something important and going astray look exactly the same for a while, in fact." P 237
On re-reading a book, 'From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler,' from the character's youth: "It's new again, read with older eyes. It's strange how a book is both steady and mutable." P.101
"This is the self that understands things about the water - the way it can swallow you, keep you concealed, maybe forever." P. 7
"...we seem to know far too much about how love starts, and recklessly little about how it might continue." P. 15
"America's tiny reign of terror, Salem represents one of the rare moments in our enlightened past when the candles are knocked out and everyone seems to be groping about in the dark, the place where all good stories begin."
"...but all people at root are time optimists. We always think there's enough time to do things with other people. Time to say things to them. And then something happens and then we stand there holding on to words like 'if.'" P. 282
"Glory was tall and had the ragged lips of someone who'd been kissing all night in a cold car, in winter." P. 10
Eeek! What IF there were never books!?? The Book of What If...? is fun, interesting and very thought-provoking! I might even be learning more than I want to admit from this kids' chapter book!
"The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting. For some it's a Broadway spotlight; for others, a lamp lit desk. Use your natural powers - of persistence, concentration, insight, and sensitivity - to do work you love and work that matters."
"How extraordinary - how wonderful! - it is that a lot of little black marks on paper can bring a person who died nearly two hundred years ago into your room: bring him so close that you know him much better than you would have known him if you met him in the flesh. It is extraordinary and it is enlarging." P 150
"There was the cool prickle of the rain in my hair, the tide going out, the soft flop of fish out in the watery sea. The wind curled and thickened and the birds flew low and dusk seemed loud to me." P. 85
"Getting older is - you think you are getting your way and you think you are getting your way and you think you are getting your way and then you are old and it turns out you didn't get your way. Or you did, ...but the consequences are deeply ironic." P. 16
Just started "Serena" last night for my book club! My dog Tartt (after author Donna Tartt) has been using it as a headrest. Has anyone else read this?!
"The artist Picasso loved pigeons so much...he named his little girl Paloma, Spanish for pigeon."
"....falconry was a balancing act between wild and tame - not just in the hawk, but inside the heart and mind of a falconer." P. 379
"You see that life will become a thing made of holes. Absences. Losses. Things that were there and are no longer." P. 280
"What is it about painting, how it can hit people exactly like music, and hit people so differently." P 344
"Most of us are never seen, not clearly, and when we are we likely jump and run. Because being seen can be followed by the crack of a shot or the twang of an arrow." P. 277
"Leadership is a reciprocating act." p.25
"People want to matter. They want to count..." p. 48
"Being supportive and encouraging is not a product of being weak. In fact, just the opposite may be true." p. 55
"When you're older you will know that at some unconscious level not only did you see it coming, but you created it, in your own blind, stumbling way."
"...(she) felt an emptiness open inside her as she lifted her arm, a sense that something vital was being subtracted from her life. It was always like that when somebody you cared about went away, even when you knew it was inevitable, and it probably wasn't your fault." P. 341
"The one sequence. Like a groove on a record cut too deep for the needle to climb out of. No matter what else is playing, this is always playing. That is the point of volume - to play something louder than this groove...The power of the sufficient dose." P.265
