Sabby

“I belong to a traumatized generation that often felt abandoned by God and betrayed by mankind. And yet, I believe that one must not estrange oneself from either God or man.”
― Elie Wiesel

“When I was growing up, Grandmamma used to say, “The Lord works in mysterious ways” or “He might not be there when you want Him, but He’s always right on time.” Evie used to say, “God will do to you what He feels like needs to be done to you.” Then Grandmamma would tell Evie to hush and remind her that getting left by a man was not the worst thing that ever happened to somebody. And Evie would say, “It’s the worst thing that ever happened to me.” She said it so much that she came down with lupus. “God wanted me to see what misery really was,” Evie said. I didn’t like all this God talk, like He was up there toying with us. I preferred more of the tenderness and acceptance my grandmother promised in her hymns. I told this to Evie when I was a little boy and she said, “You got to work with the god you were given”
― Tayari Jones, An American Marriage

“The skill I was learning was a crucial one, the patience to read things I could not yet understand.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“I am not saying that fiction has the magnitude of an earthquake, but when we are inside a good novel we leave our cozy, small apartments behind and, through fictional characters, find ourselves getting to know people we had never met before, and perhaps had even disliked as our Others.”
― Elif Shafak, Black Milk: On Writing, Motherhood, and the Harem Within