7,439 books
—
16,312 voters
Rachel Townzen
https://www.goodreads.com/rtownzen
“Grief is a ghost that visits without warning. It comes in the night and rips you from your sleep. It fills your chest with shards of glass. It interrupts you mid-laugh when you’re at a party, chastising you that, just for a moment, you’ve forgotten. It haunts you until it becomes a part of you, shadowing you breath for breath.”
― Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted
― Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted
“It's a funny thing, coming home. Everything smells the same, looks the same, feels the same, but you are different; the contrast between who you were when you left and who you are now is heightened against the backdrops of old haunts. (42)”
― Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted
― Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted
“The painful things—Werenro’s story, Re-nefer’s choice, even my own loneliness—seemed like the knots on a beautiful necklace, necessary for keeping the beads in place.”
― The Red Tent
― The Red Tent
“With each passing day, I allowed myself to become a little more intoxicated by limitless possibilities which seemed sometimes to roll in with the fog, murmur suggestions that would have made me run yelling from them had I been anywhere [other than San Francisco], then leave me to cope with that special brand of terror bestowed by sweet and sour tastes of freedom.”
― Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
― Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
“There is no restitution for people like us, no return to days when our bodies were unscathed, our innocence intact. Recovery isn’t a gentle self-care spree that restores you to a pre-illness state. Though the word may suggest otherwise, recovery is not about salvaging the old at all. It’s about accepting that you must forsake a familiar self forever, in favor of one that is being newly born. It is an act of brute, terrifying discovery.”
― Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted
― Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted
Around the World in 80 Books
— 31239 members
— last activity 19 hours, 35 min ago
Reading takes you places. Where in the world will your next book take you? If you love world literature, translated works, travel writing, or explorin ...more
The End of Your Life Book Club
— 143 members
— last activity Jul 31, 2014 12:48AM
Meaningful books and the impact they have on our lives. When my mother was dying of pancreatic cancer, I would often go with her to chemo, and we wou ...more
Rachel’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Rachel’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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