Kristen

“I think that the most essential thing is that God didn’t want Adam to be alone. God wanted Adam to be able to love someone. To have a relationship that reflected God’s own love. And so he made Eve so that Adam could love her. So that Adam could be fully human. And when he made Eve, he gave her the miraculous capacity to love Adam back. Do you ever think about how crazy that is? – Our miraculous capacity to love? We don’t know why, we don’t know how, but our hearts and souls are drawn to others. We weren’t made to be alone. We were made to love. And when we love, we automatically know God without even trying to, because God is love. If we love as he made us to love-if we love with our hearts instead of our criteria- then we simply are love.”
― Kelly Quindlen, Her Name in the Sky

“At the end of his life, the great picture book author and illustrator Maurice Sendak said on the NPR show Fresh Air, 'I cry a lot because I miss people. I cry a lot because they die, and I can't stop them. They leave me, and I love them more.'

He said, 'I'm finding out as I'm aging that I'm in love with the world.'

It has taken me all my life up to now to fall in love with the world, but I've started to feel it the last couple of years. To fall in love with the world isn't to ignore or overlook suffering, both human and otherwise. For me anyway, to fall in love with the world is to look up at the night sky and feel your mind swim before the beauty and the distance of the stars. It is to hold your children while they cry, to watch as the sycamore trees leaf out in June. When my breastbone starts to hurt, and my throat tightens, and tears well in my eyes, I want to look away from the feeling. I want to deflect with irony, or anything else that will keep me from feeling directly. We all know how loving ends. But I want to fall in love with the world anyway, to let it crack me open. I want to feel what there is to feel while I am here.”
― John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

“Say nothing to me of innocent bystanders, unearned suffering, heartless vengeance. When a comm builds atop a fault line, do you blame its walls when they inevitably crush the people inside? No; you blame whoever was stupid enough to think they could defy the laws of nature forever. Well, some worlds are built on a fault line of pain, held up by nightmares. Don’t lament when those worlds fall. Rage that they were built doomed in the first place.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky

“I would live alone for fifty years to have one day with you.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree