Alyssa Reneé

“I do not believe home is where we’re born, or the place we grew up, not a birthright or an inheritance, not a name, or blood or country. It is not even the soft part that hurts when touched, that defines our loneliness the way a bowl defines water. It will not be located in a smell or taste or talisman or a word…
Home is our first real mistake. It is the one error that changes everything, the one lesson you could let destroy you. It is from this moment that we begin to build our home in the world. It is this place that we furnish with smell, taste, a talisman, a name.”
― Anne Michaels, The Winter Vault

“You never even decided your life would be this way—it’s simply the way life has become. You’ve been carved out by the things that have happened to you. Like how the canyon can’t tell the river which way to shape it. It just allows itself to be cut.”
― Nathan Hill, The Nix

“Every time I’m in an airport,
I think I should drastically
change my life: Kill the kid stuff,
start to act my numbers, set fire
to the clutter and creep below
the radar like an escaped canine
sneaking along the fence line.
I’d be cable-knitted to the hilt,
beautiful beyond buying, believe
in the maker and fix my problems
with prayer and property.
Then, I think of you, home
with the dog, the field full
of purple pop-ups—we’re small
and flawed, but I want to be
who I am, going where
I’m going, all over again.”
― Ada Limon, Bright Dead Things

“Every life has a moment like this, a trauma that breaks you into brand-new pieces. This was hers.”
― Nathan Hill, The Nix