Marianna

“All you have to do,” he tells me, “is give a little bit of understanding to the possibility that life might not have been fair.” The trouble with good fortune is that we tend to equate it with personal goodness, so that if things are going well for us and less well for others, it’s assumed they must have done something to have brought that misfortune on themselves while we must have worked harder to avoid it. We speak of ourselves as being blessed, but what can that mean except that others are not blessed, and that God has picked out a few of us to love more? It is our responsibility to care for one another, to create fairness in the face of unfairness and find equality where none may have existed in the past.”
― Ann Patchett, These Precious Days: Essays

“Trauma is the ultimate experience of “this will last forever.”
― Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

“We don’t deserve anything—not the suffering and not the golden light. It just comes.”
― Ann Patchett, These Precious Days: Essays

“MOST OF THE writers and artists I know were made for sheltering in place. The world asks us to engage, and for the most part we can, but given the choice, we’d rather stay home.”
― Ann Patchett, These Precious Days: Essays