Lara Maynard

“You would needle and whine until finally we gave in. Your father and I would try to get you to come to the community hall and look at the quilts and pet the angora rabbits, but you wanted to eat chili corndogs and cotton candy and then get on one of those god-awful rides that had been put together by three heroin addicts with a sprocket wrench, the rides that made you feel like your head was going to be flung off your neck by centrifugal force.”
― Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

“Bury my bones in the midnight soil, plant them shallow and water them deep, and in my place will grow a feral rose, soft red petals hiding sharp white teeth.”
― V.E. Schwab, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

“Then one night a report about breast cancer came on the news, all about mammograms and early detection, women talking about finding a lump in their breast. We were making dinner. We always turned the television off when we sat down to eat but we could watch it while we were cooking. That was the rule. “I have one of those,” she said to the television set. “You had a mammogram?” She shook her head. She wasn’t looking at me. “A lump.” I had been cutting up a head of broccoli and I put down the knife and washed my hands. “What did you do about it?” “I didn’t do anything about it.” “What did the doctor say?” She looked at me then. “The whole thing scared me to death.” “So what happened?” My brain insisted on hearing it in the past tense, I had a lump in my breast once. I couldn’t understand that this was something that was happening. “I thought I’d wait for you to come home,” she said. “You’re always so good at figuring things out.” “I’ve been home three months.” But she had found the lump a year before, and taped a gauze square over it when it started to leak. When I looked at her again I could actually see a disruption in the pattern of her dress. That’s how big it was. Once we started making the hopeless rounds of oncologist appointments, the past broke away. All the things I’d thought about myself before—I am an actress, I am not an actress, I was in love, I was betrayed—disintegrated into nothing. I made bowls of Cream of Wheat she wouldn’t eat and then scraped them into the trash once they turned cold. I managed the schedule of people who wanted to come and see her, her two sons and two daughters—one of those daughters my mother—my father, my brothers, all my cousins, all her friends. I made sure no one stayed too long. I sat by her bed and read to her.”
― Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

“I understand that joy is inappropriate these days and still, we feel what we feel.”
― Ann Patchett, Tom Lake