Amanda Putman

“I reminded myself to live for today, not the fears of tomorrow—a promise I had made to myself when I started working in hospice.”
― Hadley Vlahos, The In-Between: Unforgettable Encounters During Life's Final Moments

“The saints repeated this truth time and again over the centuries; that the natural state of a human being is the continuous contemplation and memory of God. I do not mean by that a cerebral memory of God but a memory that works from within the heart.”
― Kyriacos C. Markides, The Mountain of Silence: A Search for Orthodox Spirituality

“I know again why I favor it so much here, how I esteem the hush of this suburban foliage in every season, the surprising naturalness of its studied, human plan, how the privying hills and vales and dead-end lanes make one feel this indeed is the good and decent living, a cloister for those of us who are modest and unspecial. [p. 130}”
― Chang-rae Lee, A Gesture Life

“And though the implication is that I am the sort who is always careful and preparing, I that that's not right, either' in fact I feel I have not really been living anywhere or anytime, not for the future and not in the past and not at all of-the-moment, but rather in a lonely dream of an oblivion, the nothing-of-nothing drift from one pulse beat to the next, which is really the most bloodless marking-out, automatic and involuntary. [pp. 320-321]”
― Chang-rae Lee, A Gesture Life