Julia

“Sometimes it was mild elation. Often it was a pleasant melancholy.”
― William Finnegan, Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life

“Did this really happen?” Tabitha asked. “No, dear,” Yaltha said. “It’s not meant to be a factual story, but it’s still true.” “I don’t see how,” Tabitha said. I wasn’t sure I did either. “I mean that the story can happen inside us,” Yaltha said. “Think of it—the life you’re living can be torn apart like Osiris’s and a new one pieced together. Some part of you might die and a new self will rise up to take its place.” Tabitha scrunched her face. Yaltha said, “Right now you are a girl in your father’s house, but soon that life will die and a new one will be born—that of a wife.” She turned her gaze on me. “Do not leave it to fate. You must be the one who does the resurrecting. You must be Isis re-creating Osiris.” My aunt nodded at me, and I understood. If my life must be torn apart by this betrothal, then I must try to reassemble it according to my own design. That night I lay on my bed determined to become free of my betrothal by a divorce before the marriage ritual ever occurred. It would be difficult, nearly impossible. A”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Book of Longings

“Those displays were so grand outside a single-wide metal dwelling on wheels that it felt less like us having a good view than like God having a view of us. I could feel how small we were.”
― Sarah Smarsh, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth

“A story on the page is like a printed circuit for our lives to flow through, A story told invokes our dim capacity to be alive in bodies not our own. You would want the whole planet in voice and the totality of intimate human narrations composing a hymn to enlightenment if that were possible. In”
― E.L. Doctorow, City of God: A Novel