Dana Baker

“Nothing’s over, ever.” And this is both a blessing and a curse. The past that ties us to people in ways that hurt us also ties us to people in ways that make healing possible. Sometimes we wish that the past could be over; sometimes we are grateful that it is not. It stands in the middle, “partially completed” but not over, poised between radical otherness and utter likeness. And that is why, as Weil says, “Our attachments and our passions do not so thickly obscure our discrimination of the eternal in the past.” We can see what really matters—“the eternal,” what always matters—because of that middle distance.”
― Alan Jacobs, Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader's Guide to a More Tranquil Mind

“The hardest thing to practice is not allowing yourself to be overwhelmed by despair. When you’re overwhelmed by despair, all you can see is suffering everywhere you look. You feel as if the worst thing is happening to you. But we must remember that suffering is a kind of mud that we need in order to generate joy and happiness. Without suffering, there’s no happiness. So we shouldn’t discriminate against the mud. We have to learn how to embrace and cradle our own suffering and the suffering of the world, with a lot of tenderness.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering

“Why is it, Waldemar,” I would ask him, “that when something here is so beautiful, I just want to die?” “Because it reminds you of the other place,” Waldemar would say to me. “The most beautiful place of all.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, Homesick for Another World

“It's surprising what you find out about yourself when there's no one around to tell you who you are.”
― Naheed Phiroze Patel, Mirror Made of Rain