Bertha Leal

“She had a collection of matchbooks from extravagant places, dropped here and there on tables in the dingy apartment she still shared with Gregg. They made it look as if she lived a gay, mad life. What a typical picture for anyone from out of New York: career girl's apartment, stockings drying over the shower rod, clothes flung helter-skelter in the rush to get to the office on time, to a date on time, a bottle of wine there too, wads of dust lying under the studio couch because you couldn't clean except weekends and sometimes not even then, and all those brightly colored matchbooks with names of well-known eating places, so that even if one managed only two good and sufficient meals a week one could still light one's cigarettes for the rest of the week with the memory.”
― Rona Jaffe, The Best of Everything

“Pointing directly at your own heart, you find Buddha.”
― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

“A man came up to her. Expensively tailored suit. Okay, he wasn't exactly a man because he was only thirty-five. But he was trying.”
― Candace Bushnell, Sex and the City

“Affirmations are like screaming that you're okay in order to overcome this whisper that you're not... maybe you're not okay. Well, no big deal. None of us is okay and all of us are fine.”
― Pema Chödrön, Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living