“We’re our own hardest critics and it’s easy to let ourselves down. Sleeping too late. Procrastinating. Cutting corners. More than once I’ve looked back on my high school self and thought: how did I do that? How did I work so hard? Our private insecurities follow us and will always follow us.”
― The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories
― The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories
“Grief can destroy you --or focus you. You can decide a relationship was all for nothing if it had to end in death, and you alone. OR you can realize that every moment of it had more meaning than you dared to recognize at the time, so much meaning it scared you, so you just lived, just took for granted the love and laughter of each day, and didn't allow yourself to consider the sacredness of it. But when it's over and you're alone, you begin to see that it wasn't just a movie and a dinner together, not just watching sunsets together, not just scrubbing a floor or washing dishes together or worrying over a high electric bill. It was everything, it was the why of life, every event and precious moment of it. The answer to the mystery of existence is the love you shared sometimes so imperfectly, and when the loss wakes you to the deeper beauty of it, to the sanctity of it, you can't get off your knees for a long time, you're driven to your knees not by the weight of the loss but by gratitude for what preceded the loss. And the ache is always there, but one day not the emptiness, because to nurture the emptiness, to take solace in it, is to disrespect the gift of life.”
― Odd Hours
― Odd Hours
“You know when I told you the joke about how a friend will help you move, but a real friend will help you move a body? I was only kidding.”
― Black List
― Black List
“High on their posthumous pedestals, the dead become hard to see. Grief, deference, and the homogenizing effects of adulation blur the details, flatten the bumps, sand off the sharp corners.”
― The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories
― The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories
Around the World in 80 Books
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Reading takes you places. Where in the world will your next book take you? If you love world literature, translated works, travel writing, or explorin ...more
Adan’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Adan’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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