Liz

“I used to think there was a 'before' and 'after' most things that happen to a person; that a fence of time and space could separate even quite catastrophic experience from the ordinary whole of life. But now I know that with a great devastation of some kind, there is no before or after. Even when the commotion of crisis has settled, it's still there, like that dam water, insisting, seeping, across the past and the future.”
― Charlotte Wood, Stone Yard Devotional

“But then, I reflect, there’s probably something sick about the way most people live.”
― Charlotte Wood, Stone Yard Devotional

“I have found it to be absolutely astounding, all the trouble living has turned out to be. Things nobody ever warned me about.”
― Virginia Evans, The Correspondent

“It is,” I said, and for the first time in a long time, I remembered that I loved her, or more precisely, I remembered she was a person who had lived her own autonomous life full of mistakes and disappointments and judgments and thwarted love.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler