Sarah

“To be human in an aching world is to know our dignity and become people who safeguard the dignity of everything around us.”
― Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us

“The thing you don't understand about yourself, Vivian, is that you're not an interesting person. You are pretty, yes -- but that's only because you are young. The prettiness will soon fade. But you will never be an interesting person ... What you are, Vivian, is a type of person. To be more specific, you are a type of woman. A tediously common type of a woman. Do you think I've not encountered your type before? Your sort will always be slinking around, playing your boring and vulgar little games, cause your boring and vulgar little problems. You are the type of woman who cannot be a friend to another woman, Vivian, because you will always be playing with toys that are not your own. A woman of your type often believes she is a person of significance because she can make trouble and spoil things for others. But she is neither important nor interesting.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, City of Girls

“At ten years old he realized that people were born whole, and that the bad things peeled layers from the person you once were, thinning compassion and empathy and the ability to construct a future. At thirteen he knew those layers could sometimes be rebuilt when people loved you. When you loved.”
― Chris Whitaker, All the Colors of the Dark

“We are in the habit of contention—against the world, against each other, against ourselves.

It is not from ourselves that we will learn to be better than we are.”
― Wendell Berry, The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry