Kris Dersch

“I seemed to really like people who really liked books. I wondered what that said about me.”
― Amy Rebecca Tan, Summer at Meadow Wood

“...[M]ost of us have figured out that we have to do what's in front of us and keep doing it. We clean up beaches after oil spills. We rebuild whole towns after hurricanes and tornadoes. We return calls and library books. We get people water. Some of us even pray. Every time we choose the good action or response, the decent, the valuable, it builds, incrementally, to renewal, resurrection, the place of newness, freedom, justice. The equation is: life, death, resurrection, hope. The horror is real, and so you make casseroles for your neighbor, organize an overseas clothing drive, and do your laundry. You can also offer to do other people's laundry if they have recently had any random babies or surgeries.
We live stitch by stitch, when we're lucky. If you fixate on the big picture, the whole shebang, the overview, you miss the stitching. And maybe the stitching is crude, or it is unraveling, but if it were precise, we'd pretend that life was just fine and running like a Swiss watch. That's not helpful if on the inside our understanding is that life is more often a cuckoo clock with rusty gears.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope, and Repair

“Unless you find yourself in a book, you have a hard time finding anybody else.”
― Aidan Chambers

“Fiction is like wrestling with angels-you do not expect to win, but you do expect to come away from the experience changed.”
― Jane Yolen, Take Joy: The Writers Guide To Loving The Craft