Jo

“You mustn’t wait for someone to rescue you,” Mother would continue, a faraway look in her eyes. “A girl expecting rescue never learns to save herself. Even with the means, she’ll find her courage wanting. Don’t be like that, Eliza. You must find your courage, learn to rescue yourself, never rely on anyone else.”
― Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden

“Reading fiction not only develops our imagination and creativity, it gives us the skills to be alone. It gives us the ability to feel empathy for people we've never met, living lives we couldn't possibly experience for ourselves, because the book puts us inside the character's skin.
”
― Ann Patchett

“Never underestimate the big importance of small things”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“What a very long time one had to be an adult, after rushing through childhood and adolescence. There should be several more distinctions: the idiocy of the young twenties, when one was suddenly expected to know how to do adult things; the panicked coupling of the mid- and late twenties, when marriages happened as quickly as a game of tag; the sitcom mom period, when you finally had enough food in your freezer to survive for a month if necessary; the school principal period, when you were no longer seen as a woman at all but just a nagging authority figure. If you were lucky, there was the late-in-life sexy Mrs. Robinson period, or an accomplished and powerful Meryl Streep period, followed, of course, by approximately two decades of old crone-hood, like the woman at the end of 'Titanic”
― Emma Straub, This Time Tomorrow