Leah Greer

“There are stories that are more fragile still: For every tale carved in rock there are more inscribed on autumn leaves or woven into spiderwebs. There are stories wrapped in silk so their pages do not fall to dust and stories that have already succumbed, fragments collected and kept in urns.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea

“Once there was a woman who sculpted stories.
She sculpted them from all manner of things. At first she worked with snow or smoke or clouds, because their tales were temporary, fleeting. Gone in moments, visible and readable only to those who happened to be present in the time between carving and disintegrating, but the sculptor preferred this. It left no time to fuss over details or imperfections. The stories did not remain to be questioned and criticized and second-guessed, by herself or by others. They were, and then they were not. Many were never read before they ceased to exist, but the story sculptor remembered them.
Passionate love stories that were manipulated into the vacancies between raindrops and vanished with the end of the storm.
Tragedies intricately poured from bottles of wine and sipped thoughtfully with melancholy and fine cheeses.
Fairy tales shaped from sand and seashells on shorelines slowly swept away by softly lapping waves.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea

“The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them. How much sorrow can I hold? That’s how much gratitude I can give. If I carry only grief, I’ll bend toward cynicism and despair. If I have only gratitude, I’ll become saccharine and won’t develop much compassion for other people’s suffering. Grief keeps the heart fluid and soft, which helps make compassion possible.”
― Francis Weller

“There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner.”
― Diane Setterfield, Once Upon a River