Gabrielle Stapleton

“Sometimes painfully lost people can teach us lessons that we didn't think we needed to know, or be reminded of---the more history changes, the more it stays the same.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“I’m typing away, wondering why I had that Pepsi Throwback at such a late hour. Caffeine is a compulsion. Art is an obsession. Writing is both.
It weaves in and out, this obsession, forming a basket, a basket I can hide in while pulling its lid over top; it shuts out the noise and normalcy of living. It shuts out the people and caffeinated relationships I love so well. Can you live with an artsy hermit? A sketchy-betchy, meditative, BabyBoomingPseudoHippie? Then short-term visits are in order.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“I feel in every girl there is a spirit,
a wild pixie,
that if let go,
would run and dance in grassy fields
until the end of the world.

And then that girl grows up,
that pixie hides,
but it's always there,
peeking out behind old eyes
and reading glasses,
laughing, waiting,
to one day dance again.”
― Atticus

“Public libraries seem to me a powerful example of the way that gift economies can coexist with market economies, at a larger scale. . . To me, they embody the civic-scale practice of a gift economy and the notion of common property. Libraries are models of gift economies, providing free access not only to books but also music, tools, seeds, and more. We don't each. have to own everything. The books at the library belong to everyone, serving the public with free books. . . Take the books, enjoy them, bring them back so someone else can enjoy them, with literary abundance for all. And all you need is a library card, which is a kind of agreement to respect and take care of the common good.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World