Elizabeth

“It's great that you can listen and be a shoulder to someone, but what about when someone doesn't need a shoulder? What if they need the arms or something like that? You can't just sit there and put everybody's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can't. You have to do things.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“It was cold out here in this world beyond childhood.”
― Leslie W.P. Garland, The Bat (The Red Grouse Tales) - A coming of age story involving a search after truth, doubt and a bat!

“Instead I turned my attention back to the copper of peach jam, releasing its autumnal scent. Peach is perhaps the most perfect fruit for making jam: sweet, yet firm; the golden flesh turning to a darker burnt-orange with cooking. My method allows the pieces of fruit to stay intact during the process, while retaining all the flavor. Today, we will leave the sugar and peach mixture to steep under a sheet of muslin; tomorrow, we will cook it, then ladle it into clean glass jars to put away for the winter.
There's something very comforting about the ritual of jam-making. It speaks of cellars filled with preserves; of neat rows of jars on pantry shelves. It speaks of winter mornings and bowls of chocolat au lait, with thick slices of good fresh bread and last year's peach jam, like a promise of sunshine at the darkest point of the year. It speaks of four stone walls, a roof, and of seasons that turn in the same place, in the same way, year after year, with sweet familiarity. It is the taste of home.”
― Joanne Harris, Peaches for Father Francis

“There's a point, around the age of twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia