Cher

“People get it wrong. The magic’s not in the person. The magic is in the place. It just takes the right kind of person to pull it up.”
― Cherie Dimaline, VenCo

“To survive here, I have split myself in two: my true self and my false self. My fake self rises up to take over when the demands are too great. Maybe there must always be two of us—our real selves and the ones we create to survive in the world as it is.”
― Sarah Rose Etter

“Here is a separation. Your heart, the park of you that feels. Your mind, the part of you that thinks. Your soul, the part of you that is. I almost never hear neuroscientists speak about the soul. Because of our work, we are often given to thinking about the part of humans that is the vital, inexplicable essence of ourselves, as the workings of our brain-- mysterious, elegant, essential. Everything we don't understand about what makes a person a person can be uncovered once we understand this organ. There is no separation. Our brains are our hearts that feel and our minds that think and our souls that are. But when I was a child I called this essence a soul and I believed in its supremacy over the mind and the heart, its immutability and connection to Christ himself.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom

“Strays is what a writer I recently read calls those who, for one reason or another, and despite whatever they might have wanted earlier in life, never really become a part of life, not in the way most people do. They may have serious relationships, they may have friends, even a sizable circle, they may spend large portions of their time in the company of others. But they never marry and they never have children. On holidays, they join some family or other group. This goes on year after year, until they finally find it in themselves to admit that they'd really rather just stay home.”
― Sigrid Nunez, The Friend