Rachel

“In life, there's the beginning and the end. The beginning don't matter. The end don't matter. All that matters is what you do in between – whether you're prepared to do what it takes to make change. There has to be physical and material sacrifice. When all the dust settles and we're getting ready to play down for the ninth inning, the greatest reward is to know that you did your job when you were here on the planet.”
― John Carlos

“And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“The anger was vast and it came out of nowhere. It was the rage of something not fitting; the frustration of trying to put something in a box that is slightly too small. You try moving the shape around in the hope that some angle will make it fit in the box. Slowly comes an apprehension that this might not, after all, be possible. And finally you know it won’t fit, know there is no way it can fit, but this doesn’t stop you using brute force to try to crush it in, punishing the bloody thing for not fitting properly. That was what it was like: but I was the box, I was the thing that didn’t fit, and I was the person smashing it, over and over again, with bruised and bleeding hands.”
― Helen Macdonald

“I think of this life, of my life, of the things I built and planted. I have been lucky to know such richness. But I also think of how my husband taught me something else, something so wrong I am stunned that I ever believed it: that in the face of the world's end love should shrink. (p.290)”
― Charlotte McConaghy, Wild Dark Shore