kathy

“Here was something else that she could not share. She could not conceive of her country emotionally: it was a way of living, and abstract of several landscapes, or an oblique frayed island, moored at the north but with an air of being detached and washed out west from the British coast.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, Der letzte September

“If I were to prepare one immaculately inspected generality it would be this: For all of our enormous geographic range, for all of our sectionalism, for all of our interwoven breeds drawn from every part of the ethnic world, we are a nation, a new breed. Americans are much more American than they are Northerners, Southerners, Westerners, or Easterners. And descendants of English, Irish, Italian, Jewish, German, Polish are essentially American. This is not patriotic whoop-de-do; it is carefully observed fact. California Chinese, Boston Irish, Wisconsin German, yes, and Alabama Negroes, have more in common than they have apart. And this is the more remarkable because it happened so quickly.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

“When I try to picture for myself what a happy life might look like, the picture hasn't changed very much since I was a child - a house with flowers and trees around it, and a river nearby, and a room full of books, and someone there to love me, that's all. Just to make a home there, and to care for my parents when they grow older. Never to move, never to board a plane again, just to live quietly and then be buried in the earth.”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

“For January, I don't care how the story ends as long as I spend it with you.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read