Kathy

“Passer-by,
To love is to find your own soul
Through the soul of the beloved one.

-- quoted from Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology”
― Monica Wood, How to Read a Book

“We'd been discussing Spoon River Anthology -- a womanly discussion about life and legacy and the bottomless currents that burble beneath even the simplest existence. That's Harriet's word: burble. We'd been reading aloud, back and forth, remarking how the characters chose to record their brief time in this ever-moving stream. A few tried to capture the whole winding length of it, but most settled on the rocks and ripples -- a moment, a day, an especially fraught or tender time. Some recalled their death, some their life. Some relived their worst, some their best. All of them, though (Harriet and I both noticed this), seemed compelled to make some sort of accounting, convincing those still living that they, too, had lived, and not in vain.”
― Monica Wood, How to Read a Book

“Harriet Larson had said yes all her life. To her parents. To her teachers. To Lou and the girls. To Corinne and Sophie. She'd said yes to shopkeepers, to doctors, to car salesmen, to Girl Scout leaders, to Mormons on rounds, to hairdressers who wouldn't let her go gray. She'd been raised to say yes, to agree and approve and adapt and accommodate, to step aside as the architect of her own happiness. After Lou's death she vowed to say yes only when that yes belonged to her, solely to her. And so: Yes to college. Yes to teaching. Yes to retirement. Yes without being asked; yes before being asked. Yes to Book Club. Yes to Violet. Yes to the filthy and broken Dawna-Lynn, for whom she was searching out a bright, becoming color from a closet too full of beige. These yesses felt like power, like gateways, like love.
"Frank." She laid her cheek on his chest. "Yes.”
― Monica Wood, How to Read a Book

“The problem with retrospect is it never shows up beforehand.”
― Monica Wood, How to Read a Book