Bella Ruiter-Ehsani

“You look like a boy who has eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge and doesn't like the taste.”
― Cinda Williams Chima, The Warrior Heir

“The love stories sold us the wrong thing. The best kind of love doesn’t happen on moonlit walks and romantic vacations. It happens in between the folds of everyday life. It’s not grand gestures that show how you feel, it’s all the little secret things you do to make her life better that you never tell her about. Taking the end piece of the bread at breakfast so she can have the last middle piece for her sandwich when you pack her lunch. Making sure her car always has gas so she never has to stop at the pump. Telling her you’re not cold and to take your jacket when you are in fact, very, very cold. It’s watching TV on a rainy Sunday while you’re doing laundry and turning her light off when she’s fallen asleep reading. Sharing pizza crusts and laughing about something the kids did and taking care of each other when you’re sick. It isn’t glamorous, it isn’t all butterflies and stars in your eyes. It’s real. This is the kind of love that forever is made of. Because if it’s this good when life is draining and mundane and hard, think of how wonderful it will be when the love songs are playing and the moon is out.”
― Abby Jimenez, Just for the Summer

“Not everything that comes out of crisis is bad. Sometimes your traumas are the reason you know how to help.”
― Abby Jimenez, Just for the Summer

“People created stories to fill the gaps they didn’t understand, and religion grew up around it like rot on a fallen tree.”
― Hannah F. Whitten, For the Wolf