Caroline

“How I picture it: We are all nesting dolls, carrying the earlier iterations of ourselves inside. We carry the past inside us. We take ourselves–all of our selves–wherever we go.
Inside forty-something me is the woman I was in my thirties, the woman I was in my twenties, the teenager I was, the child I was.
Inside divorced me: married me, the me who loved my husband, the me who believed what we had was irrevocable and permanent, the me who believed in permanence.
I still carry these versions of myself. It's a kind of reincarnation without death: all these different lives we get to live in this one body, as ourselves.”
― Maggie Smith, You Could Make This Place Beautiful

“Likewise, parents are not wise oracles—they’re just people trying to shepherd other people through the world. We may know the right path to take, but knowing the way and consistently walking it are two different things. Everything we learn, we learn from someone who is imperfect.”
― Maggie Smith, You Could Make This Place Beautiful

“Alone is how—”
“—is how we survive, yes, you’ve said. I can’t say whether that’s true or not, but one thing I do know is that alone is not how we live.”
― Sangu Mandanna, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

“This is what it is to be rooted in a place, or to have a place rooted inside you: Every bit means something to someone you know, and therefore, every bit means something to you.”
― Maggie Smith, You Could Make This Place Beautiful