Rachel

“But, in the early morning sunlight, dressed in their white gowns, the possibility of sin seemed to have been extinguished. Their sins were expunged. Major catastrophes like cheating on your wife and leaving your family, could no longer happen, would no longer happen.
But, of course, they did, and they do.”
― Paula Carter

“Sometimes I try to pray, late at night when I am unable to sleep, my bed hot from my body and me tossing and turning. It's hard not to pray in a rehearsed way, and I can feel myself perform a routine even in my most desperate moments: "Oh Lord, please help me do X or feel Y." So I try to sink back into myself, to a self that is unaware of church and religion, to a more primal self. I imagine God as the night sky, not a man or even a person, and then I try just to be me, to be real, to experience my humanity with God as a witness.”
― Paula Carter

“If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

“The classroom was a jail of other people’s interests. The library was open, unending, free.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates