Rumal

“It hurts to live after someone has died. It just does. It can hurt to walk down a hallway or open the fridge. It hurts to put on a pair of socks, to brush your teeth. Food tastes like nothing. Colors go flat. Music hurts, and so do memories. You look at something you’d otherwise find beautiful—a purple sky at sunset or a playground full of kids—and it only somehow deepens the loss. Grief is so lonely this way.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“If you don’t get out there and define yourself, you’ll be quickly and inaccurately defined by others.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“Work, beauty and romance, then marriage, mortgage and kids: that definition of total freedom has been allowed to conquer our imaginations, leaving no space for any other lives. But what if you want something else? Is that still allowed?”
― Laurie Penny, Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution

“But that’s not entirely. My life has been defined by the things I didn’t do. The things I didn’t say think it’s the same for a lot of people. What shapes us is not always our achievements but our omissions. Not lies: simply the truths we don’t sell.”
― C.J. Tudor, The Chalk Man