Jj

“Slowly, over many months, as my head came out of the sand, a form of joy set in —joy born of replacing the not knowing with knowing, the nub of worry with clarity, the lack of control with control...I thought, 'this is better than everything I lost. This is better than the life I thought I wanted.”
― Belle Burden, Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage

“And I could see that the cost for feeling safe was being controlled. They were two sides of the same coin—protection and control.”
― Belle Burden, Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage

“And doesn’t it all look different, wouldn’t your own story look different, if you knew how it was going to end?”
― Belle Burden, Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage

“Lucy said, looking at him now, “My point is that every person on this earth is so complicated. Bob, we’re also complicated, and we match up for a moment—or maybe a lifetime—with somebody because we feel that we are connected to them. And we are. But we’re not in a certain way because nobody can go into the crevices of another’s mind, even the person can’t go into the crevices of their own mind, and we live— all of us— as though we can.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything