Rachel

“Hell is the absence of the people you long for.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

“…I keep looking for one more teacher, only to find that fish learn from the water and birds learn from the sky.” (p.275)”
― Mark Nepo, Facing the Lion, Being the Lion: Finding Inner Courage Where It Lives

“You are pure-hearted, Branza, and lovely, and you have never done a moment's wrong. But you are a living creature, born to make a real life, however it cracks your heart. However sweet that other place was, it was not real. It was an artifact of your mam's imagination; it was a dream of hers and a desire; you could not have stayed there forever and called yourself alive. Now you are in the true world, and a great deal more is required of you. Here you must befriend real wolves, and lure real birds down from the sky. Here you must endure real people around you, and we are not uniformly kind; we are damaged and impulsive, each in our own way. It is harder. It is not safe. But it is what you were born to.”
― Margo Lanagan, Tender Morsels

“Survival is insufficient.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven