Taara

“Following the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades of middle
school, high school would have been a fresh start. When I got to
Fairfax High I would insist on being called Suzanne. I would
wear my hair feathered or up in a bun. I would have a body that
the boys wanted and the girls envied, but I’d be so nice on top of
it all that they would feel too guilty to do anything but worship
me. I liked to think of myself — having reached a sort of queenly
W
status — as protecting misfit kids in the cafeteria. When someone
taunted Clive Saunders for walking like a girl, I would deliver
swift vengeance with my foot to the taunter’s less-protected parts.
When the boys teased Phoebe Hart for her sizable breasts, I
would give a speech on why boob jokes weren’t funny. I had to
forget that I too had made lists in the margins of my notebook
when Phoebe walked by: Winnebagos, Hoo-has, Johnny Yellows.
At the end of my reveries, I sat in the back of the car as my father
drove. I was beyond reproach. I would overtake high school in a
matter of days, not years, or, inexplicably, earn an Oscar for Best
Actress during my junior year.
These were my dreams on Earth.”
― Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones

“She laughed and said: “Because nothing. I’d like you to forgive me, but I don’t expect you to.
Anyway, that’s not the half of it, not even a small bit of it, actually. The main thing is, I kept you and
Tommy apart.” Her voice had dropped again, almost to a whisper. “That was the worst thing I did.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“To fall in love with the world isn’t to ignore or overlook suffering, both human or otherwise. For me anyway, to fall in love with the world is to look up at the night sky and feel your mind swim before the beauty and the distance of the stars. It is to hold your children while they cry and watch the sycamore trees leaf out in June. When my breastbone starts to hurt, and my throat tightens and tears well in my eyes, I want to look away from feeling. I want to deflect with irony or anything else that will keep me from feeling directly. We all know how loving ends. But I want to fall in love with the world anyway, to let it crack me open. I want to feel what there is to feel while I am here.”
― John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

“Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See