Michelle

“Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

“Marriages are nesting dolls, too. We carry each iteration: the marriage we had before the children, the marriage of love letters and late nights at dive bars and train rides through France; the marriage we had after the children, the marriage of tenderness but transactional communication—who’s doing what, and when, and how—and early mornings and stroller walks and crayon on the walls and sunscreen that always needs to be reapplied; the marriage we had toward the end before we knew there was an end, the marriage of the silent treatment and couch sleeping and the occasional update email. Somewhere at the center is the tiniest doll. Love. The love that started everything. It’s still there, but we’d have to open and open and open ourselves—our together selves—to find it. I can’t bear to think of it in there somewhere, the love. Like the perfect pit of some otherwise rotten fruit.”
― Maggie Smith, You Could Make This Place Beautiful

“But the thing nobody ever tells you about the shepherd analogy is that shepherds always eat their sheep in the end.”
― Daniella Mestyanek Young, Uncultured: A Memoir