Holly

“[He] put a tape on the car stereo and when I heard Neil Young singing, I shouted for him to turn it off, saying I was allergic to that whiny goddamn bastard.”
― Nadia Bozak, Orphan Love

“You will die.

That's the beautiful, terrible, simple truth of it. A biological fact, a medical reality and a genealogical axiom. You can walk around it, rationalise it in faith or medicate against it, but it won't change the ultimate outcome. Implicit in the fact of your existence is the inevitability of your extinction.

You will die. Maybe soon. Maybe not for many years. But you will.”
― Stephen McGann, Flesh and Blood: A History of My Family in Seven Maladies

“A family isn’t simply a passive inheritance. It’s defined by the bonds its members choose, and not just the bonds assigned by genetics. Each time a family member joins their life to a biological stranger in marriage, adoption or through having children, a new clan joins itself to our family tree at the junction point of the union. New ancestors are fused with ours. New descendants are sired by the mingling of separate genetic codes. Without this chosen love our gene pool would stagnate. Without this new family, an assigned inheritance couldn’t continue. Genes might specify the way we’re put together, but without our human will to love beyond those specifications, a family can’t be all the things it might be.”
― Stephen McGann, Flesh and Blood: A History of My Family in Seven Maladies

“Lonely people tend to scoop out larger spaces of isolation to burrow into by cutting themselves off from others - triggering the self-fulfilling prophecy of preventing rejection by avoiding opportunities for connection. Bonds are weakened, contact is reduced, loneliness fissures outward.”
― Kristen Radtke, Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness