Emma

“It's God's nature to come on in the bottom of the ninth, Tom had told her.”
― Stephen King, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

“Because around a crisis point, even the tiniest action can assume importance all out of proportion to its size. Consequences multiply and cascade, and anything—a missed telephone call, a match struck during a blackout, a dropped piece of paper, a single moment—can have empire-tottering effects. The Archduke Ferdinand’s chauffeur makes a wrong turn onto Franz-Josef Street and starts a world war. Abraham Lincoln’s bodyguard steps outside for a smoke and destroys a peace. Hitler leaves orders not to be disturbed because he has a migraine and finds out about the D-Day invasion eighteen hours too late. A lieutenant fails to mark a telegram “urgent” and Admiral Kimmel isn’t warned of the impending Japanese attack. “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost. For want of a horse, the rider was lost.”
― Connie Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog

“What are you watching? Is it comforting? I don’t have the bandwidth to give a fuck about anything not comforting to me most of the time. I know that’s “uncultured,” but also I don’t care because who are you, person challenging me? I want to watch Veep before bed because it makes me laugh, and I want to watch true crime documentaries, and I want to watch British actors in terrific costumes battling through emotions they weren’t even aware they had. That’s all. I’m tired. Find your comforting shit. Build your mental fort and hang out there.”
― Anne T. Donahue, Nobody Cares

“I picked up a book on gardens, so I could study flowers and trees and vines in that way, and honest to God, people who read my novel believed that I loved to garden. Sometimes in fact they would start talking shop with me, thinking we could jam away, as gardeners are wont to do, until I let them know that I had only been winging it, with a lot of help from people around me, people who knew a lot more about gardens than I, friends who would cover for me, just like in real life. ‘You don’t love to garden?’ they’d ask incredulously, and I’d shake my head and not mention that what I love are cut flowers, because this sounds so violent and decadent, like when Salvador Dalí said his favorite animal was fillet of sole.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird