Olivia

“She would prompt me, and I would stare dumbly back at her, thinking only about Monkey and hunger and the price of cat food. Do you think that if you had the security of knowing you would always be fed, and you would always have shelter, and you didn't have to worry about these basic parts of survival...?
I finished for her: I would be different”
― Courtney Gustafson, Poets Square: A Memoir in Thirty Cats

“By the time you’re done with him, he’ll be begging for mercy. Who is he if he can’t control you? Is he even a man anymore? It will seem like a relief when you give him a hand, even if that hand is holding a blade. And when you take everything from him, you can say what these men say about us: He was asking for it. He was begging for it. He must have wanted it, since he didn’t fight back.”
― Monika Kim, The Eyes Are the Best Part

“ I basically think the one job you have as a parent is to give your kid a childhood they don’t have to recover from.”
― Julia Armfield, Private Rites

“The only moral, meaningful course for a civilization facing its own end: To learn how to ask forgiveness and to atone in some tiny measure for the devastating harm we had done to our human family and to our fellow creatures and to the beautiful earth. To love and forgive one another as best we could. And to learn how to say goodbye.”
― Sigrid Nunez, What Are You Going Through