Whitney Van Arsdall

“The world ain't straight. You grow up thinking things are a certain way. You think there are rules. You think there's a way that things have to be. You try to live straight. But the world doesn't care about your rules, or what you believe. The world ain't straight, Vivian. Never will be. Our rules, they don't mean a thing. The world just happens to you sometimes, is what I think. And people just gotta keep moving through it, best they can.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, City of Girls

“You can't hurry love, as the song goes. You can't hurry grief either.”
― Sigrid Nunez, The Friend

“People have a right to think things will change. I allowed myself that much.”
― Terese Marie Mailhot, Heart Berries: A Memoir

“In Senegal, the polite expression for saying someone died is to say his or her library has burned. When I first heard the phrase, I didn’t understand it, but over time I came to realize it was perfect. Our minds and souls contain volumes inscribed by our experiences and emotions; each individual’s consciousness is a collection of memories we’ve cataloged and stored inside us, a private library of a life lived.”
― Susan Orlean, The Library Book