Amianne Bailey

“It’s almost painful, the way little children just trustingly hold out their hearts for you to look at—the way they haven’t learned yet how to conceal what matters to them, even if it’s just chewing gum or a plush dolphin or plastic binoculars.”
― Catherine Newman, Sandwich

“What if Mary Oliver is right and this is our one wild and precious life? What if we really don’t get any days back, and this whole life is ours to either grind our way through or throw our arms open for delight, for wonder, for joy and beauty and connection? What if we keep putting off happiness until later and later never comes? What if we hang doggedly on to 'surely this thing will eventually get better' but it doesn’t? Are we really just helpless recipients of stalled, drained, broken things, or do we have some agency? What if a life exists so full we would barely recognize it against our hustle and exhaustion and emptiness? Have we settled when we don’t have to? What if there is a different path, a different pace, a different peace? Apparently people can choose the life they want.”
― Jen Hatmaker, Awake

“The rage I feel watching leaders who assured us we were the problem now repeal our autonomy while giving men in power a free pass. Male pastors embroiled in sexual abuse? We’ll handle this in-house; no need to alert the authorities for family business, she is probably lying anyway. Women who cross state lines”
― Jen Hatmaker, Awake: A Memoir

“But grief was like a silver locket with two faces in it. I didn’t know what the faces looked like, but it was heavy around my neck, and I never took it off.”
― Catherine Newman, Sandwich