Jan Smith

“He remembered how Michael had bragged that he could swim, but he couldn’t. He said that he’d read everything about swimming, firmly believing he could trip across words, like stepping stones, to the bank of experience. But he couldn’t. It would take another summer before Michael would learn to swim. But he floated, though. Face down in the river with his arms and legs out wide, and people watched, and sometimes their laughter turned to panic when they saw little sign of movement. Dead-Man’s Float, he”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“The needle breaks the fabric in order to repair it. You can’t have one without the other.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: How I learned to flourish when life became frozen

“suffering from an avalanche of depression; we’re urged to stop sweating the small stuff, and yet we’re chronically anxious. I often wonder if these are just normal feelings that become monstrous when they’re denied. A great deal of life will always suck. There will be moments when we’re riding high, and moments when we can’t bear to get out of bed. Both are normal. Both, in fact, require a little perspective. Sometimes, the best response to our howls of anguish is the honest one: we need friends who wince along with our pain, who tolerate our gloom, and who allow us to be weak for a while when we’re finding our feet again. We need people who acknowledge that we can’t always hang on in there; that sometimes, everything breaks. Short of that, we need to perform those functions for ourselves: to give ourselves a break when we need it, and to be kind. To find our own grit, in our own time.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: How I learned to flourish when life became frozen

“Maude’s bedroom was a veritable time capsule, a personally collated museum containing all her treasures. Whenever friends had entered the room, it hit them in the eye, like a migraine; swirling colours and an attack on the senses. Along with the aroma of patchouli, Maude’s favourite, there was an unmistakable aura of times gone by, dimensions overlapping and coming together.”
― Patricia Dixon, Resistance