Melissa

“The farmers, who rent out their house so they can stay afloat, and sleep all together in a studio, but spend their days off outside on a picnic blanket, living the lives they want to live. Drew and Melanie, with their two homes and their horses and their love story. And Rene, traveling across the world, painting temporary masterpieces. Even my uncle Pete has something good worked out with Melinda and his day trips and his best friend, my dad, who has a small nice house in San Francisco and a dozen neighborhood vendors who know him by name.

All of these different ways of living. Even Sophie, with her baby in that apartment, with her record store job and her record collection. I imagine her twirling with her baby across her red carpet with Diana Ross crooning, the baby laughing, the two of them getting older in that apartment, eating meals on red vinyl chairs. Walt, too, as pathetic as his situation is, seems happy in his basement, providing entertainment to Fort Bragg's inner circle. All of them, in their own ways, manage to make their lives work.”
― Nina LaCour, The Disenchantments

“It's incredible," she says, "how much damage everyone does to everybody else.”
― Nina LaCour, The Disenchantments

“You get close to people. You get farther from them. You learn how much you love them, and then you say good-bye, believing that you will be together again, someday, when your lives curve back into one another's.”
― Nina LaCour, The Disenchantments

“Kid, not everything in life can be summed up neatly in a paragraph. No book has all of the answers. Not even the really good ones. You have to find the answers yourself sometimes.”
― Heather Brewer, Second Chance