Libby

“We want splendid books, books that immerse us in the splendor of reality and keep us there; books that prove to us that love is at work in the world next to evil, right up against it, at times indistinctly, and that it always will be, just the way that suffering will always ravage hearts. We want good novels...And even if there is only one such book per decade,...only one...every ten years, that would be enough. We want nothing else.”
― Laurence Cossé, A Novel Bookstore

“Lament is a cry of belief in a good God, a God who has His ear to our hearts, a God who transfigures the ugly into beauty. Complaint is the bitter howl of unbelief in any benevolent God in this moment, a distrust in the love-beat of the Father's heart.”
― Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are

“some of us are given too much to bear, and this burden is made worse by the hidden nature of that toll, a toll that others cannot even begin to guess at.”
― Natalie Jenner, The Jane Austen Society

“But nothing disturbs the feeling of specialness like the presence of other human beings feeling identically special.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Freedom