Justina

“One of the most important things you can do on this earth is to let people know they are not alone.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“God has equipped us with his Holy Spirit simply to tell our own story---the good, the bad, and the real. The best part is no one can argue with us. It's our story. And when others realize you don't need a degree in evangelism, they become empowered to tell their own God-story. It's not that complicated. Maybe the early church thrived because they didn't pay people to be the professional 'church people'---they all were 'it.”
― Thom Schultz, Why Nobody Wants to Be Around Christians Anymore: And How 4 Acts of Love Will Make Your Faith Magnetic

“Yes, you do hate Switzerland. And," doctor Messerli paused for effect, "you love it. You love it and you hate it. What you don't feel is apathy. You're not indifferent. You're ambivalent."
Anna had thought about this before, when nights came during which she could do nothing but wander Dietlikon's sleeping streets or hike the hill behind her house to sit upon the bench where most often she went to weep. She'd considered her ambivalence many, many times, and in the end, she's diagnosed herself with a disease that she'd also invented. Switzerland syndrome. Like Stockholm syndrome. But instead of my captors, I'm attached to the room in which I'm held captive. It's the prison I'm bound to, not the warden.

Anna was absolutely right. It was the landscape. it was the geography. The fields, the streams, the lakes, the forests. And the mountains. On exceptionally clear days when the weather was right, if you walked south on Dietlikon's Bahnhofstrasse you could see the crisp outlines of snow-capped Alps against a blazing blue horizon eighty kilometers away. On these certain days it was something in the magic of the atmosphere that made them tangible and moved them close. The mutability of those particular mountains reminded Anna of herself. And it wasn't simply the natural landscape that she attached herself to emotionally. It was the cobblestone roads of Zürich's old town and the spires of this church and the towers of that one. And the trains, the trains, the goddamn trains. She could take the train anywhere she wanted to go.”
― Jill Alexander Essbaum

“People like you must create. If you don't create, Bernadette, you will become a menace to society.”
― Maria Semple, Where'd You Go, Bernadette