Rebecca Learnihan

“The past informs the present. Memory makes the map we carry, no matter how hard we try to erase it.”
― Cara Black, Murder in the Bastille

“The near enemy. It's a psychological concept. Two emotions that look the same but are actually opposites. The one parades as the other, is mistaken for the other, but one is healthy and the other's sick, twisted. There are three couplings. Attachment masquerades as Love, Pity as Compassion, and Indifference as Equanimity.

Compassion involves empathy. You see the stricken person as an equal. Pity doesn't. If you pity someone, you feel superior. As long as the pity's in place there's not room for compassion. It squeezes out the nobler emotion.”
― Louise Penny

“It is very risky. But each time a child opens a book, he pushes open the gate that separates him from Elsewhere.”
― Lois Lowry

“Take pride in your pain; you are stronger than those who have none”
― Lois Lowry, Gathering Blue