Vashti

“There was a savoir faire quality to people who lived in America for which he felt both admiration and resentment; they somehow managed to be familiar with all novelty, as if they were privy to the latest of everything and lacked the ability to be surprised.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Visit

“It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“He stressed the futility of an encyclopedic knowledge for its own sake, and wound up with the injunction,“Don’t be a damned ammunition wagon; be a rifle!”
― Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy

“Isolating oneself into a narrowly defined victim group promotes a view of others as irrelevant at best and dangerous at worst, which eventually only leads to further alienation. Gangs, extremist political parties, and religious cults may provide solace, but they rarely foster the mental flexibility needed to be fully open to what life has to offer and as such cannot liberate their members from their traumas.”
― Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma