Bonnie Wilcox

“A neighbor exists without condition--if I were to declare that this person is my neighbor and that person is not, then it is I, and not they, who have failed at neighborliness. It is only by claiming all as your neighbors, and behaving as though all are your neighbors, that we become good neighbors ourselves. The act of being a good neighbor must always begin with us.”
― Kelly Barnhill, The Ogress and the Orphans

“The Death of Leaves You are not the leaves which blaze with color every fall, then fall ground into the ground. Their death is not your death. No, you are the tree, which moves its energy down in autumn, to the roots, in ample store. Bare branches best prepared for winter cold and winter winds. That’s not to say the loss of leaves is not a loss. The grief of losing all your color, your connection to the sun is real grief. The stripping is a real stripping. But as every fall speaks of coming spring and every winter holds its end in its beginning your own sap will rise again in longer light nourishing every small branch and you, tree, human, living creature will grow green life again.”
― Jessica Kantrowitz, Blessings for the Long Night: Poems and Meditations to Help You through Depression

“There’s this thing that happens, let’s say at school where a bunch of guys are in the bathroom, at the urinal, laughing about some dork that made an anus of himself in gym. You’re all basically nice guys, right? You know right from wrong, and would not in a million years be brutal to the poor guy’s face. And then it happens: the dork was in the shitter. He comes out of the stall with this look. He heard everything. And you realize you’re not really that nice of a guy. This is what I would say if I could, to all smart people of the world with their dumb hillbilly jokes: We are right here in the stall. We can actually hear you.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

“To be human in an aching world is to know our dignity and become people who safeguard the dignity of everything around us.”
― Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us