Kim Roen

“That we were frightened by your death—no . . . it is that your harsh death darkly interrupted us, divided what-had-been from what-would-be: that was our concern; coming to terms with it will accompany everything we do: Today; tomorrow. Again and again. You have gone on. . . . But you were frightened”
― Jason Mott, Hell of a Book

“feeling passed, and what took its place was something akin to bliss. Sitting on the porch with Mildred was not a respite from another task but a way to spend the day. Cleaning the kitchen could wait until tomorrow; dusting George’s study could wait a lifetime. There were stretches where she did not even bathe. A life without motion, without expectations—it was the secret she kept from the outside world, for no one else comprehended the great joy in abandonment, in giving up and starting over with a blank page, a page that might never be filled.”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“Lars is more than the mere product of his world, though. He has depths of kindness that Rhea feels she lacks in herself. She does not have his capacity for forgiveness. Her emotions and mind and self are more tightly wound, more intertwined in an eternal dialogue for meaning and purpose and expression. She has a compulsion to articulate and expound, to render the world explicable, if only to herself. Letting it be, moving through, submitting to silence—these are not her ways. They are for Lars. He comes to terms with humanity as it presents itself. He expresses himself not in a torrent of words and ideas and disruptions, revelations and setbacks, but through an ever-expanding capacity to face what comes next. To see it clearly. To say what needs to be said and then stop. What is for her an act of will is for Lars a process of life.”
― Derek B. Miller, Norwegian by Night

“A life is substantially more curious, and mundane, than the reports would have it. And in truth, though I am known—within the tiny dewdrop circles of the unlikely few who know of me—as a solitary, unmatched Arctic hunter, I am no such thing, and I was seldom alone.”
― Nathaniel Ian Miller, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven