Ron Christiansen

“Despair is a form of certainty, certainty that the future will be a lot like the present or decline from it. Optimism is similarly confident about what will happen. Both are grounds for not acting. Hope can be the knowledge that reality doesn't necessarily match our plans.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Men Explain Things to Me

“Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.”
― Hazel Rochman

“What’s your story? It’s all in the telling. Stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of a world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice. To love someone is to put yourself in their place, we say, which is to put yourself in their story, or figure out how to tell yourself their story.”
― Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby

“Stories like yours and worse than yours are all around, and your suffering won’t mark you out as special, though your response to it might.”
― Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby