Jenny Herrera

“Self-respect is a discipline, a habit of mind that can never be faked but can be developed, trained, coaxed forth. It was once suggested to me that, as an antidote to crying, I put my head in a paper bag. As it happens, there is a sound physiological reason, something to do with oxygen, for doing exactly that, but the psychological effect alone is incalculable: it is difficult in the extreme to continue fancying oneself Cathy in Wuthering Heights with one’s head in a Food Fair bag. There is a similar case for all the small disciplines, unimportant in themselves; imagine maintaining any kind of swoon, commiserative or carnal, in a cold shower.”
― Joan Didion

“Quiet desperation is another name for the human condition.”
― Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

“This is where Lent starts, with the voice of God, singing the praise of Jesus, the Son. Just as this affirmation calls Jesus into the wilderness, so it calls us, too. We are starting out from a place of loving acceptance, not from one of rejection; we are starting out with the certainty that God knows who we are and loves us, so that are explorations are to find out why that should be. We are exploring a reality that is given to us, not achieved by our own effort. Yet, glorious as this sounds, it is also terrifying, because if it starts with God and not with us, then we are not in control of it. Jesus steps into the River Jordan with such apparent ease, laying aside all claims to define himself, and that is our journey, too. So easy and so hard.”
― Jane Williams, The Merciful Humility of God: The 2019 Lent Book

“unaccustomed to the ambushes of family life, and perhaps it is just as well that I can offer her little of that life. I would like to give her more. I would like to promise her that she will grow up with a sense of her cousins and of rivers and of her great-grandmother’s teacups, would like to pledge her a picnic on a river with fried chicken and her hair uncombed, would like to give her home for her birthday, but we live differently now and I can promise her nothing like that. I give her a xylophone and a sundress from Madeira, and promise to tell her a funny story.”
― Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays