Sula

“For recreation do something entirely useless, child," he had often said to her. "Man's interest in the unnecessary is a measure of his civilization.”
― Elizabeth Coatsworth, Here I Stay

“Mammie was out there in the dark and cold. No one would ever bring her in, to warm and dry and cherish her. There was rain seeping through the earth and into her coffin. Water gets everywhere. It finds a way, no matter how tight the carpenter dovetails his joints. When rain spattered on the windows I could never run to open the door for her, to take off her cloak to dry it by the fire, kneel to take off her boots. She was part of the cold darkness. She would never come in. And here I was, still putting food into my mouth and swallowing it.
I lay bound, as heavy as if I too had the weight of six feet of earth above me.”
― Helen Dunmore, Birdcage Walk

“There was radiant sunshine, the kind that comes sometimes in November, more ethereal than the light of summer. The sky was china-blue, ice-cold, and the sunshine delicate as yellow pollen. This light lay on the walls, already powdered with gold lichens, it gilded the trees, and gave the old farmhouse the appearance of unreality. It was dream-like, it was an old coloured print in a picture book, flat and unshadowed, and brimmed with a living beauty, sending out a light of its own.”
― Alison Uttley, When All is Done

“It was not until I listened to the desperately lonely people who contact The Samaritans that I began to understand what friendship is, by seeing how terrible and damaging it is to try live without it.
The knowledge of knowing of even one, not very close, friend provides some sense of belonging. If you do not belong anywhere it is hard to survive. One of the common elements in suicide is the pain of loss, and the final loss is the conviction that there is no place at all where you safely belong. You are worth nothing, not even to yourself. Especially to yourself. There becomes no point in not killing yourself.
People are able to survive for years in a deadly marriage or a dull job, because they do at least belong there. The crippling routine of housework, a production line, a viewless office with anaemic plants - even Mildred's desk and typewriter cover may be what has kept her going all these years. Simone Weil once said that what keeps people committed to a cause is not so much the cause itself, as being part of the way of life among those who serve the cause.”
― Monica Dickens, An Open Book