Katherine

“There should be a phone service that turns off your phone between midnight and six A.M. every night. And if you want to make a call, you have to pick up the phone and talk to an operator: Put me through to AAA. My car battery's dead. Yes, ma'am. Put me through to Pink Dot. I need vanilla Häagen-Dazs toute de suite! Yes, ma'am. Put me through to my ex-boyfriend... I'm sorry, ma'am, the operator would say. That would be a bad idea. Now you go to bed before you do anything stupid.”
― Kim Gruenenfelder, A Total Waste of Makeup

“Work hard. Be nice. Hurt no one.”
― Kim Gruenenfelder, Misery Loves Cabernet

“When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world”
― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Volume One

“I try to avoid having thoughts. They lead to other thoughts, and—if you’re not careful—those lead to actions. Actions make you tired. I have this on rather good authority from someone who once read it in a book.”
― Brandon Sanderson