Allyson

“She closed her eyes, trying to remember the photos that had hung on the walls. She had passed these pictures every day, but now she only remembered them vaguely--her parents on their wedding day, her mother in a garden, her family at Knott's Berry Farm. How had she not memorized them? Or maybe she had once but she was beginning to forget. Did the house smell different because her mother's scent was gone? Or had she just forgotten how her mother smelled?”
― Brit Bennett, The Mothers

“You English have a saying. "Come to your senses."'
'Yes.'
'What do you think it means?'
'It means to be reasonable, sensible.' She looked across at him. 'Doesn't it?'
'Maybe.' His eyes caught the afternoon light; flickering amber, flecked with green.
'What else could it mean?'
'Perhaps it's an invitation. Maybe we need to literally come to our senses, to return to our sense of taste, touch, sight, smell, hearing and find sustenance in them, inspiration. Life is, after all, a sensual experience. Our senses have the power to truly transport us but also to ground us. Make us human.”
― Kathleen Tessaro, The Perfume Collector

“I never knew a sorrow that an hour of reading could not assuage, a great man had once said. Let's put it to the test.”
― Anna Gavalda, Hunting and Gathering

“We were girls once. As hard as that is to believe. //Oh you can't see it now--our bodies have stretched and sagged, faces and necks drooping. That's what happens when you get old. Every part of you drops, as if the body is moving closer to where it's from and where it'll return.”
― Brit Bennett, The Mothers