Barbara Ellis

“Better to believe the world is at least half-full of decent intentions than to focus on how it’s also half-full of assholes.”
― Mary Laura Philpott, Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives

“She had once read in a book about consciousness that over the years, the human brain makes an AI version of your loved ones. The brain collects data, and within your brain, you host a virtual version of that person. Upon the person’s death, your brain still believes the virtual person exists, because, in a sense, the person still does. After a while, though, the memory fades, and each year, you are left with an increasingly diminished version of the AI you had made when the person was alive.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“It was something that was hard to see until you had some measure of success, but it wasn’t success that made one an artist. One was an artist. One was successful or not at selling work, but the sale of art no more made a man an artist than it made him a man. An artist simply was.”
― Meg Waite Clayton, The Postmistress of Paris

“I know now that, when you get to a grandfather’s age, life takes on the qualities of comedy, with aches.”
― Niall Williams, This Is Happiness