Jess

“This is really why I made my daughters learn to garden—so they would always have a mother to love them, long after I am gone.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

“I am tired of writing dainty little biographical things that pretend that I am a trim little housewife ... I live in a dank old place with a ghost.”
― Shirley Jackson, Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings

“Sit down. Inhale. Exhale.
The gun will wait. The lake will wait.
The tall gall in the small seductive vial
will wait will wait:
will wait a week: will wait through April.
You do not have to die this certain day.
Death will abide, will pamper your postponement.
I assure you death will wait. Death has
a lot of time. Death can
attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is
just down the street; is most obliging neighbor;
can meet you any moment.
You need not die today.
Stay here–through pout or pain or peskyness.
Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow. Graves grow no green that you can use.
Remember, green’s your color. You are Spring.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks

“When I first used to write stories and hide them away in my desk, I used to think that no one had ever been so lonely as I was. And I used to write about people all alone. Once I started a novel but never finished because I found out about insanity and I used to write about lunatics after that. I thought I was insane and would write about how the only sane people are the ones who are constantly condemned as mad, and how the whole world is cruel and foolish and afraid of people who are different.”
― Shirley Jackson