Joe Hobson

“According to the terms of her personal lexicon, a woman was a lady only if she was fascinating and ungovernable, and my mother considered herself nothing if not a lady.”
― Jamel Brinkley, Witness: Stories

“In that part of California, where I grew up it always rained at Christmas, a hard cold rain that darkened the sky at 4 o'clock and threatened the levees and provided a table topic, at my grandmother's house on Christmas afternoon, to which we could all contribute without fear of making our emotions too manifest. It seems to me now that those Christmas afternoons in the rain were somehow "better" than any since, but of course I am lying to myself. Then as now, mothers and daughters misunderstood each other. Father and sons did not speak. I remember my mother telling me, after such an afternoon some years ago, that Christmas used to be "better," that lately we all drank too much and gave one another too many presents.”
― Joan Didion, Joan Didion: What She Means

“Mr. Head could have said to it that age was a choice blessing and that only with years does a man enter into that calm understanding of life that makes him a suitable guide for the young. This, at least, had been his own experience.”
― Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“Our family was an organic, free-range, humanely sourced kind of family. The kind of family who uses plant-based cleaners that aren’t strong enough to actually degrease anything so every pot and pan has a sort of waxy sheen on it forever. My parents were hippies and didn’t do anything according to the status quo. I’m pretty sure my father still wakes up every morning, checks in on what the entire world is doing, and then does the opposite.”
― Laura Chinn, Acne