Natasha Cobb

“The light catches in the bare branches of the maple and clothes it in a fleeting dream of autumn, all pink and auburn and gold. The cardinal perched near the top of the tree bursts into radiance, into flame, and for that moment nothing matters at all—not the still soil nor the clattering branches nor the way this redbird will fall to the ground in time, a cold stone, and I too will grow cold, and all my line.”
― Margaret Renkl, Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss

“When I told my mother about the dream, she was puzzled. "But what's scary about that? You were never scared of that doll."
I shook my head, meaning that the doll I'd owned ⎯ and barely remembered ⎯ had never scared me. "But it was very scary," I said, meaning that the reappearance of it in my dream had been terrifying.
My mother looked at me, baffled. "But it's not scary," she said gently. I'm sure she was trying to make me feel better and thought this reasonable statement would help. She was absolutely amazed when it had the opposite result, and I burst into tears.
Of course she had no idea why, and of course I couldn't explain. Now I think ⎯ and of course I could be wrong ⎯ that what upset me was that I'd just realized that my mother and I were separate people. We didn't share the same dreams or nightmares. I was alone in the universe, like everybody else.”
― Lisa Tuttle, My Death

“The whole business of what’s reality and what isn’t has never been solved and probably never will be. So I don’t care to be too definite about anything. I have a lot of edges called Perhaps and almost nothing you can call Certainty.”
― Mary Oliver, Blue Horses

“To believe that your hopes of election depend on fewer people voting is to have a tragically weak level of trust in the value of your own positions, and your ability to defend them.”
― Pete Buttigieg, Trust: America's Best Chance