Maggie Murdock Nichols

“What a job, to raise someone from birth to adulthood, bestowing upon them your knowledge and your values and, despite your best intentions, any number of traits you’ve inherited yourself. What a loaded task, to make every move, every day, in such a way that the impressionable larva-person in your home will see your example, process it into something within herself, and grow layers of muscle and soul over it until she is a fully developed human being. And all the while, the little person you’re nurturing is fighting you—spitting out the broccoli, not wearing the helmet, rolling her eyes at your carefully chosen words of advice—and you become constantly worn down even as you pour your energies into loving her.”
― Mary Laura Philpott, I Miss You When I Blink: Essays

“At first, as the months went by, it was shameful to me when I would realize that without my consent, almost without my knowledge, something had made me happy. And then I learned to think, when those times would come, 'Well, go ahead. If you're happy, then be happy.' No big happiness came to me yet, but little happinessess did come, and they came from ordinary pleasures in ordinary things; the baby, sunlight, breezes, animals and birds, daily work, rest when I was tired, food, strands of fog in the hollows early in the morning, butterflies, flowers. The flowers didn't have to be dahlias and roses either, but just the weeds blooming in the fields, the daisies and the yarrow. I began to trust the world again, not to give me what I wanted, for I saw that it could not be trusted to do that, but to give unforeseen goods and pleasures that I had not thought to want.”
― Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter

“You kill an artist, you kill all their unmade art too. Why don't people think about that before they hurt each other?”
― Meg Shaffer, The Lost Story

“The familiar words of Jesus are “Without me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). But these must be balanced by the insight that, in general, if we do nothing it will certainly be without him.”
― Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God