Amy Roebuck

“Public life...lacks coherence and drama. (History, by contrast, attains coherence and drama only in hindsight.)”
― Michael Wolff, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House

“Joshua said nothing, for his mind was even now limning the vacancy. Lincoln would no more be seated on the far side of the dining table. He would no more ride his horse into town or let his huge hands rove through the library of stroll past the hemp house or listen to Eliza gabble or applaud Mary's nocturnes or argue some abstruse point of law with James or scratch behind Growler's ears as the dog lay stretched around his feet. From henceforth, there would be only space where Lincoln used to be.
And in Joshua's mind, that space began to expand and deepen until it became a vast nullity, blanketing everything around him until it seemed the night itself had been swallowed up by it.”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln

“There's zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“I ask Mom if love ever made her feel alone. If it ever made her feel like she was starving in a room full of food.

She laughs. 'Only every day.' She leans over to me, across the gap between us, so that the side of her head touches mine....She whispers something, but I can't hear the words.

'I never thought I'd be the type of person who would do that to someone,' I say. 'Now it's exactly what I am. Forever.'

Mom nods. 'It's always like that.'

'What do you mean?' I ask.

'Whenever I've made a choice in my life, a real choice...I can always feel the change, after I choose. The better versions of myself, moving just out of reach.'

It's exactly what I think. So there's nothing to say....

'I'm always losing better versions of myself,' she says. 'I don't know. You just have to keep trying.'

[Kaui, in conversation with her mother Malia]”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors