Laura Beth Harris

“My girlish body hadn't accrued much character. There were no hard knocks or tall tales writ on my flesh, no scars or distinguishing marks beyond freckles. All us young'uns were blank canvases, awaiting life's paintbrush. I had Cuca's flat butt and mom's water-jug belly, but no real narrative you could read on my curves. That's what made me a girl. One day I would be a woman whose body told tales, and I would show them to other women with equally epic, if distinctly shaped, bodies as a younger generation beheld with awe. This would be my defiant adulthood. The messy book of womanhood's flesh was something to
aspire to.”
― Quiara Alegría Hudes, My Broken Language

“I know the days ahead of me are fewer than those I have left behind. There is no escaping this most basic fact of accounting. A certain amount of time is allotted to each of us. How much, only God knows. We cannot invest it. We cannot hope for a return of any kind. All we can do is spend it, second by second, decade by decade, until it runs out. Still, even if our days on this Earth are limited, we can always, through toil and industry, hope to extend our influence into the future. And so it is that, having lived my life with an eye set on posterity in the hopes of improving the lives of later generations, I enter these remaining years of mine not with nostalgia for all that is gone but with a sense of excitement for what is yet to come.”
― Hernan Diaz, Trust

“That’s all I’ve managed as far as freedom is concerned, to get rid of the people and things I don’t like. After that, there isn’t all that much left!”
― Rachel Cusk, Second Place

“Most people prefer to take care of themselves before they take care of the truth, and then wonder where their talent has disappeared off to.”
― Rachel Cusk, Second Place