Shelley

“In New Orleans—if you could get to New Orleans—would the music be loud enough?”
― Annie Dillard, The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old and New

“When they invented the car they invented the collision and the darkness of what time leads the willing body to do.”
― David Wojnarowicz, Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration

“When I came home in the middle of the night I was tired; I longed for a tolerant giant, a person as big as a house, to hold me and rock me.”
― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life: The Classic Essay Collection on the Creative Process

“Empathy isn't just something that happens to us - a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain - it's also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves. It's made of exertion, that dowdier cousin of impulse. Sometimes we care for another because we know we should, or because it's asked for, but this doesn't make our caring hollow. This confession of effort chafes against the notion that empathy should always rise unbidden, that genuine means the same thing as unwilled, that intentionality is the enemy of love. But I believe in intention and I believe in work. I believe in waking up in the middle of the night and packing our bags and leaving our worst selves for our better ones.”
― Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams