Rachel

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

“Handshaking is about balance, really, between the limp fish shake and the bone-crushing vise. Perhaps someday I'll graduate to the two-handed shake that a spry nun once gave me at a soup kitchen, her hands cupped around my own with a gentle press, as though listening to me was all she wanted to do.”
― Nicole Sheets

“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

“Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre