Cate Riely

“Put me down easy, Janie, Ah’m a cracked plate.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“Consider yourself for a moment—everything you’ve overcome, everything you’ve survived. Think of the people who loved you up into your now. Think of how hard school is or was, how you were lucky or blessed to meet people you could love and who could love you. Think about how rare and precious humans are, and how many of them you get to worry for and care about. Then, if you can, find a way to multiply that times 1,250,000. That is why we must work together to end tuberculosis and all other diseases of injustice.”
― John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

“Love must reach over to both sides and draw them together.
We cannot love ourselves unless we love others, and we cannot Iove others unless we love ourselves”
― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

“When you write a novel, you are alone in it. I wrote that book alone, sitting in airports and coffee shops and lying in bed. But when writing, there is always for me a hope that one day I will not be alone—not in this work and not in this world. It is a bit like that old children’s pool game Marco Polo, where one person closes their eyes and swims around the pool trying to tag someone else. “Marco,” the person with eyes closed says, and the other pool-goers have to answer, “Polo.” “Marco, Marco, Marco,” cries one kid, and the others reply: “Polo. Polo. Polo.” Writing is like that for me, like I’m typing “Marco, Marco, Marco” for years, and then finally the work is finished and someone reads it and says, “Polo.”
― John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection