Katie

“If you’re a fly, you keep flying and being a nuisance. If you lived in Linares at that time, you could never stop going out to the fields or ranches to tend to your crops or animals. You might close the store for a few days because of the initial shock, but you would open it again because, even if your relatives were sick or dead, your needs and the needs of others—those who sold to you and those who bought from you—persisted. If you lived at that time, you could not avoid having to go out to buy food, and not a day could pass without washing diapers or underpants, even if you sent your mother to the cemetery two hours earlier. In the midst of this crisis, you had tooth decay, infected toenails, and stomach upsets—slight or severe—that you put up with for a while before having to seek help from a doctor, if you could find one. Others went out to sell goat milk, or whistles, yo-yos, and spinning tops in the square, in the hope that there were still children alive to buy them.”
― Sofía Segovia, The Murmur of Bees

“Because the perfect course of action can only be seen in hindsight, which is why we fill life with so many should haves.”
― Sofía Segovia, The Murmur of Bees

“But that’s nostalgia for you, the tyranny of those memories of childhood that feel so golden, so perfect.”
― Lucy Foley, The Guest List

“Troubles come uninvited,” the woman said, “but we have to bring happiness ourselves.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night