Cristie

“There is no explaining this simple truth about life: you will forget much of it. The painful things you were certain you’d never be able to let go? Now you’re not entirely sure when they happened, while the thrilling parts, the heart-stopping joys, splintered and scattered and became something else. Memories are then replaced by different joys and larger sorrows, and unbelievably, those things get knocked aside as well,”
― Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

“Or, as the writer Anaïs Nin put it, “We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are.”
― David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

“The real act of, say, building a friendship or creating a community involves performing a series of small, concrete social actions well: disagreeing without poisoning the relationship; revealing vulnerability at the appropriate pace; being a good listener; knowing how to end a conversation gracefully; knowing how to ask for and offer forgiveness; knowing how to let someone down without breaking their heart; knowing how to sit with someone who is suffering; knowing how to host a gathering where everyone feels embraced; knowing how to see things from another’s point of view.”
― David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

“The greatest thing a person does is to take the lessons of life, the hard knocks of life, the surprises of life, and the mundane realities of life and refine their own consciousness so that they can gradually come to see the world with more understanding, more wisdom, more humanity, and more grace.”
― David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen