Marne - Reader By the Water

“In his writing, he was always at his funniest, his smartest, his most thoughtful, and his most courageous and adventurous. Prose so good it would make you laugh until you cried. I recognize now his books are not the shade of him, they’re the quintessence of his soul, the distillation of a great adventurer and a good man. He’s still with us through those books.”
― Geraldine Brooks, Memorial Days

“There is who we want to be, she thought, and there is who we are. As we get older the former gives way to the latter, and maybe this is who I am now, someone better off by themselves. Not happier, but better off. Not an introvert, just an extrovert who had lost the knack.”
― David Nicholls, You Are Here

“There is who we want to be, she thought, and there is who we are.”
― David Nicholls, You Are Here

“[Greens] don't come through the back door the same as other groceries. They don't cower at the bottom of paper bags marked 'Liberty.' They wave over the top. They don't stop to be checked off the receipt. They spill out onto the counter. No going onto shelves with cans in orderly lines like school children waiting for recess. No waiting, sometimes for years beyond the blue sell by date, to be picked up and taken from the shelf. Greens don't stack or stand at attention. They aren't peas to be pushed around. Cans can't contain them. Boxed in they would burst free. Greens are wild. Plunging them into a pot took some doing. Only lobsters fight more. Either way, you have to use your hands. Then, retrieving them requires the longest of my mother's wooden spoons, the one with the burnt end. Swept onto a plate like the seaweed after a storm, greens sit tall, dark, and proud.”
― Georgia Scott, American Girl: Memories That Made Me