“To end my life having exhausted the whole of it in the pursuit of worldly things means that I will die holding no things. But to exhaust the whole of it in the pursuit of God means that I will die holding all things. And the difference between the two is everything.”
―
―
“She wanted to talk about it, to tell the peasants in the fields and the nobles in their palashos—the cows in the pastures, the very birds in the air— that everything was nothing.
It was a delightful thought because it meant (to Tess) that one was free to choose, or decline to choose, without shame or coercion. For someone who was nothing, anything was possible.”
― Tess of the Road
It was a delightful thought because it meant (to Tess) that one was free to choose, or decline to choose, without shame or coercion. For someone who was nothing, anything was possible.”
― Tess of the Road
“When everything goes right you feel you are the only reason behind it, when everything goes wrong you feel every one around you is the reason for it.”
―
―
“I’d been raised to be confident and see no limits, to believe I could go after and get absolutely anything I wanted. And I wanted everything. Because, as Suzanne would say, why not? I wanted to live with the hat-tossing, independent-career-woman zest of Mary Tyler Moore, and at the same time I gravitated toward the stabilizing, self-sacrificing, seemingly bland normalcy of being a wife and mother. I wanted to have a work life and a home life, but with some promise that one would never fully squelch the other. I hoped to be exactly like my own mother and at the same time nothing like her at all. It was an odd and confounding thing to ponder. Could I have everything? Would I have everything? I had no idea.”
― Becoming
― Becoming
Byron’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Byron’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Byron
Lists liked by Byron







