Rick Berdelle

“Here I was, pondering the incongruity of being a mother and an academic, of devoting oneself to two projects, which is to say living a life, which is, I guess, no incongruity at all. Merely living, merely choosing, in each moment, who and what to which you will attend. The Latin, atendere, means to stretch.”
― Julia Fine, The Upstairs House

“Peter would have said that behaviors are determined by principles, theories.

That the difference between Theory of God and Theory of Not God was actually quite slim, each a slightly different lens through which to choose to view the world. One a shade lighter, the other negligibly darker—what mattered was that both were held up to the eye and used to filter our experience. It was easier to change the lens than to remove the vehicle of understanding, easier to adjust my sense of how I fit into the world than reconceive of the world entirely.”
― Julia Fine, What Should Be Wild

“Some questions are birthed, rather than asked, and having been born they will cry until tended. I knew the story of Pandora's box. I knew the cost of Eve tasting the apple. I didn't care. I was led by my desire.”
― Julia Fine, What Should Be Wild

“Above him, around him, the elder dreams of soil. Dreams of glassy, glinting snow. Dreams of its own greatness - taller, wider, more light. It knows nothing of self-sabotage, regret, or restitution.”
― Julia Fine, What Should Be Wild